


Little Earthquakes

by EvaM



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Black Hermione Granger, F/F, F/M, M/M, Slytherin Hermione Granger, Slytherins Being Slytherins, There are gonna be more tags eventually, There are ships but these kids are 11 when it starts, This fic ate my brain, au no one asked for
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:40:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24817762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvaM/pseuds/EvaM
Summary: You understand you’ll have a hard time fitting in.That doesn’t matter to me. I don’t fit in anywhere. I’m too loud, or too opinionated, or too smart, or too quiet, or too- this is inside my head, which means I don’t have to pause to breathe. Would you like me to keep going?Eleven-year-old Hermione Granger is sorted into Slytherin and sets out to make some real friends. It gets complicated very quickly.
Comments: 70
Kudos: 220





	1. Every finger in the room is pointing at me

**Author's Note:**

> So I read (and loved) about 5 million Harry in Slytherin AUs. Then I read one really really good Ron in Slytherin AU. Then I started wondering what a Hermione in Slytherin AU would be like and instead of doing the sensible thing and finding one to read, I spent 90% of my three hour train commute writing it. Then I repeated that for many days. Now I have no commute, but I do have 50K words of a fic that spans all 7 years at Hogwarts give or take. Unfortunately, they're not written chronologically because I wrote scenes as they occurred to me. 
> 
> All this is to say that a lot of this fic is written already, so there will definitely be updates, but before updates happen, more writing will have to happen. Anyway, if you've stuck with me this far, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.

**_You understand you’ll have a hard time fitting in._ ** **_  
_** **_  
_** _That doesn’t matter to me. I don’t fit in anywhere. I’m too loud, or too opinionated, or too smart, or too quiet, or too- this is inside my head, which means I don’t have to pause to breathe. Would you like me to keep going?_ _  
__  
_**_No, I see your point. You’re less concerned about fitting in than about realizing your potential. Or, wait, that isn’t it, is it? Because you’ll do that no matter where I put you. No, you want to be recognized for reaching your potential. Respected. Rewarded._ ** **_  
_** **_  
_** _Well if you can read my mind, then you’ll understand it would be a nice change of pace._

Silence. Stillness. Then-  
  
 _If I can be...great, they’ll accept me? Maybe even want to be my friends?_ _  
__  
_**_Maybe. They look after their own. This path will not be an easy one to walk._ ** **_  
_** **_  
_** _I didn’t ask for easy._ _  
__  
_**_You’re very brave. You would do quite well in Gryffindor._ ** **_  
_** **_  
_** _I’m brave when it counts. I want to be great, and I want real friends._ _  
__  
_**_Very well. Better be…_ ** **_  
_** **_  
_** “SLYTHERIN!”  
  
Hermione politely ignores the jaws that have dropped all around the room and the smattering of half-hearted, confused applause that accompanies her as she joins Goyle comma Gregory at the Slytherin table.

-

Pansy’s heart is pounding as she unpacks her things. A mudblood? In Slytherin? The house has been home to plenty of half-bloods she knows, but the muggleborns are few and far between. What is she going to be like? What if she’s savage? Her hair certainly indicates that as a possibility. Her hands tremble and she checks again to make sure she can reach her wand quickly if she needs to. _  
__  
_A hand slamming her trunk shut knocks her out of her stupor and she jumps, finding Daphne’s furious blue eyes suddenly boring into her. “You’re being ridiculous.” She hisses. “She’s normal. Kind of awkward. Good at school, which you are not.”

“Excuse me?” Merlin, the mudblood is right behind them. “I can hear you. I mean, I have rather good hearing, but also you’re talking at full volume in an enclosed room.” She shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Everyone is talking around me, but not to me. I get it. I’m muggleborn and that’s rare for Slytherin.” 

She’s attracted Millicent and Tracey’s attention and the two of them have wandered over to listen. “I’ve read every textbook we were assigned from cover-to-cover. I’ve read _Hogwarts, A History_ twice. I know what it means to be pure-blooded and I know that’s what most of this house is and I’ve already heard five upper-years say the word ‘mudblood’ and at least three of them were talking about me.” She sighs. “I’m not saying I expect us to be best friends, but I am saying that I will do my best to bring honor to Slytherin house. I can do it with academics, but I may need some help with customs.” 

Daphne nods, eyes bright. “Of course. We can help with that. We’re all here for the same reason.” _Speak for yourself,_ Pansy wants to say. 

Millicent speaks then, her voice low and steady. “You should be prepared for people telling you you’re bringing dishonor on Slytherin house just by being in it.” Off Daphne’s glare, she continues, “No one in this room is saying it, not even Pansy. She’s just scared of muggles. But you should be prepared.” Belatedly, Pansy realises that she should be offended that Millicent thinks she’s scared of muggles. Except, she’s not wrong.

Tracey pipes up, "You should be prepared for the other houses to be pretty unfriendly. They think Slytherin means evil. I'm honestly not sure how you ended up here. Most of us are hereditary Slytherins." 

The mudblood purses her lips. "It's ridiculous to label schoolchildren as evil and equally ridiculous to assume we're all alike," and Pansy notices her very deliberate use of _we_. "Slytherin is the house of people who want to do great things, no? Ambition and cleverness?"

Millicent chuckles. "Cunning, I think they say."

The mudblood shrugs. "Semantics," and Millicent, Daphne, and Tracey all laugh. While Pansy’s head is still spinning, Daphne actually reaches out to shake the mudblood’s hand. 

"Well, welcome to Slytherin. Good luck." 

-

Hermione doesn't fall asleep for a few hours. Instead, she stares at the top of the canopy bed thinking about what on Earth she's gotten herself into. 

At the very least, none of her new dorm-mates have called her a mudblood to her face, though she's almost positive she hears Parkinson comma Pansy mutter it in a whispered argument with Greengrass comma Daphne. 

From what she can gather, Pansy, Millicent, and Daphne all know each other from before Hogwarts and it sounds like they knew _of_ Tracey. Tracey is a half-blood whose father is fairly prominent in the Ministry of Magic and her mother is some fabulously talented and beautiful actress, but her parents aren’t together anymore. 

Then there's her. _Mudblood. Freak._

It could have been so much worse today. No one's lobbed a spit ball at her or thrown her books into the mud. No one's commented on her hair or her clothes. There are even other black kids in her dorm, Tracey and Zabini comma Blaise, who had given her a haughty sniff when he settled at the Slytherin table and proceeded to ignore her for the rest of the night. Actually, all the boys had ignored her, except for Goyle comma Gregory when he couldn't get his tie on right. She'd fixed it for him twice over the course of dinner and he'd smiled and said thank you instead of telling her to buzz off because he didn't want help, especially from her, which was what she'd been expecting. 

Hogwarts could be a perfectly ordinary boarding school and it would already have surpassed every other school she's ever attended. But Hogwarts _isn't_ ordinary. Hogwarts has _magic_ and that means that it is officially the best place in the entire world. And if she can make friends by being the best? She's going to be just fine. 

The next morning, she wakes early. They're supposed to get their timetables at breakfast and she wants to be ready. She spends longer than she's proud of assembling her outfit for her first day and trying to figure out if she should do something with her hair before giving up. 

When she reaches the common room, it's quiet, though there is a fire burning low in the grate and early morning sunshine is filtering through the lake. She spares a moment to take everything in. She's at a school for magic surrounded by witches and living in a dorm room built from a literal dungeon that looks out into a magical lake with mermen and a giant squid. She's in the house of ambition, the house of greatness. Never mind that they hate her. 

Daphne finds her just before she reaches the door. "Granger, hey. Wait up." Daphne's red hair is rivaling Hermione's in messiness, though since it's straight and thin she'll have a much easier time taming it. Her eyes are bleary and she clearly got dressed in about thirty seconds. "I'll go up to breakfast with you. Um, would you mind giving me a minute to brush my hair?" 

Hermione nods, a little bewildered, as Daphne pulls a small brush out of her bag and begins to use one of the mirrors in the common room to pull herself together. "It's very kind of you to come with me. You needn't have troubled yourself."

Daphne glances over at her and there is something sharp in her pale blue eyes. "To be honest, I don't really think you should be going places alone, at least not until you've settled in a bit. People might...well, people like to play tricks. I don't think you'll need to worry about our year, but I threw some basic wards up around your belongings just in case." 

Wards. Right. She should have thought of that. Daphne must read something in her expression because she says, "This must all be a lot to take in. You're doing well. Much better than some muggleborns. You came prepared." She pauses, tilts her head. "And you came with thick skin. That's important too." 

Daphne talks the whole way down to the Great Hall. Her mother is on the Board of Governors at Hogwarts so she's privy to some information that the general student population wouldn't be. Apparently everyone is holding their breath because Harry Potter starts Hogwarts this year and there are rumors that Death Eaters or other Voldemort sympathizers might target him now that he's away from his family. Daphne, Hermione notices, uses "You-Know-Who" to describe the dark wizard Voldemort. She'd been expecting "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named," so she makes a mental note to try "You-Know-Who" when it's casual conversation. Maybe she can practice with Daphne if Daphne ever stops talking to take a breath.

"I mean, sure, he's supposed to be this great wizard, but he's eleven. You know? And anyway, Draco didn't seem terribly impressed with him." Right, that would be Draco Malfoy, the rude little boy who stared at her like she was something he’d scraped off his shoe. Apparently his father is also on the Board.

"I met Potter on the train," Hermione volunteers. "He was pretty quiet, seemed a little overwhelmed. He and that Weasley boy were no help at all finding Neville's toad."

Daphne’s eyes brighten. “Oh, Neville Longbottom! His grandmother is on the Board as well and I’ve seen her at a few events. She’s incredibly intimidating and she goes around in a hat with a stuffed vulture on it that probably wouldn’t be fashionable except it’s being worn by Augusta Longbottom. Rumor has it that Neville’s a bit of a dud though.”

Hermione's heart twists. She'd thought Neville was quite sweet actually and he was very grateful when she helped him track down Trevor. Neville isn't in her house though, so she demurs. "I don't know anything about his magic, but he does seem to have trouble keeping track of his belongings." 

Daphne snorts. "He'll fit right in with Tracey then. I would put a galleon down that she comes to breakfast without her tie." 

Tracey does come down to breakfast without her tie, though she squeaks and sprints back to the dorms to retrieve it, earning rolled eyes from their Head of House as he distributes their timetables. When he's safely out of earshot, Daphne whispers, "If she'd been in another house, he'd have taken points."  
  
Professor Snape terrifies Hermione a little bit. He’d said very little to them on the first night in the Dungeons, but the gist of it had been ‘If you embarrass me or Slytherin, I will make you wish you were never born.’ He’d also stared at her for what had probably only been a second or two longer than everyone else, but it had felt like eons.   
  
“So he favors his own house? That doesn’t seem sporting.” Hermione freezes, realizing she’s going to have to learn to bite her tongue if she’s going to get anywhere. Daphne doesn’t seem offended though. She just shrugs. 

“I’d wager all of the Heads of Houses favor their own. Pass the bacon?”  
  
Potions is their first class of the day. So far, the only person who has spoken more than a few words to her is Daphne, so she’s more than a little relieved when it’s Daphne that sits down at the table next to her. Parkinson has cozied up at a table with Malfoy and Millicent and Tracey are sitting with each other. 

As it turns out, Professor Snape is still terrifying, but in a very engaging way. Hermione listens to his speech about brewing fame and bottling glory and starts off on a high note, earning five points for Slytherin when she’s able to answer his increasingly tricky series of questions. She notices a couple of the other students giving her considering looks then, but it’s quickly overshadowed by how transparently Snape loathes Harry Potter. She tries to start a conversation about it later when they're at lunch, but she mostly gets shrugs and rolled eyes. Snape loathes Potter because Potter is loathsome. Well...okay then. 

She gets a few people more to notice her when she’s the first person in Charms class to levitate her feather and she earns a smile from Gregory Goyle when she corrects his pronunciation of _wingardium leviosa._ She also earns a glare from Draco Malfoy, but he glares a lot, so she just shrugs it off. Goyle’s feather sort of halfheartedly bounces on the desk, but his eyes light up and Theodore Nott claps him on the shoulder.  
  
Daphne sits next to her again at dinner, so she feels like she can’t just wolf down her meal and go to re-read the texts for tomorrow’s lessons. Something must show on her face though, because Daphne asks, “Were you planning to go study after dinner?” Somewhat abashed, Hermione nods. 

Daphne bites her lip. “Okay. Well I guess- do you want to go to the library?” Across the table, Pansy Parkinson scoffs and Theodore Nott’s eyes have gone a little wide. Daphne rolls her eyes. “Don’t look so shocked. I can go to the library if I want to go to the library.” She swigs her pumpkin juice and then stands as if to prove her point. Hermione hurries to follow. 

As they’re making their way down the hallway, Hermione asks, “I don’t mean to be rude, but why were they so surprised that you offered to go to the library with me?” She’d have thought it was because Daphne was willingly choosing to accompany a _mudblood_ anywhere except that Daphne’s reaction had seemed to suggest something different.

Daphne smiles, though it’s more like a smirk. “School is maybe not so much my thing. Pansy and I shared a tutor with Draco and Theo and we were a rather...spirited group. In the end, I think he despaired of all of us save Draco. He’s a bit of a swot when you get to know him.” 

Hermione has been thinking of a few words that she would use to describe Draco Malfoy and ‘swot’ isn’t one of them. That must show on her face too, because Daphne laughs all the way to the library.

-

Draco is more tired than he’s proud to admit on the first night after classes. He heads straight back to the common room after dinner with Vince and Greg dutifully traipsing after him. They play a few half-hearted rounds of Exploding Snap while he gets a head start on his Potions essay, but pretty quickly filter back to the dorm to find Blaise and Theo already getting ready for bed. They look up when he walks in.

Theo chews on his lip for a moment before asking, “Are we going to...do anything about the mudblood?” 

Draco sighs. He’d known this was coming, but he’d been hoping to talk to his godfather or his mother before he talked to his housemates. In retrospect, that’s what he should have been doing tonight instead of watching Vince and Greg’s mutually assured Exploding Snap destruction. 

He’s saved from answering by Blaise. “I don’t think we can. Daphne’s stuck to her like glue. She’s clearly trying to make a point. They went to the library together.” 

Draco feels his eyebrows shoot up. “Daphne? Willingly stepped foot into a library? She knows there are books there, right?” Blaise snorts and Theo giggles softly. Draco leans back on his heels. “Well, that’s our answer then. We do nothing and we wait and see. Maybe the mudblood problem will solve itself.” Maybe there _isn’t_ a mudblood problem. “Although if we see Pansy heading for the library, we go straight to my father and we tell him the apocalypse is nigh.” 

The other boys laugh again and some of the tension dissipates, only to reform a few minutes later after they’ve all climbed into bed when Theo says, “Did you notice she knew all the answers in class today? She didn’t even look anything up. She must have studied it ahead of time.” 

Vince nods. “She helped with Greg’s feather.” 

Draco leans back on his bed and stares at the ceiling. “So what you’re saying is she’s smart for a mudblood?” 

Blaise is muffled and he sounds half asleep when he chimes in, “I think what they’re saying is she’s smart for a smart person.” 

Draco doesn’t have a response to that. Theo isn’t done thinking out loud though. “Do you think maybe that’s why she got put in Slytherin? Because we’re the house of greatness and she’s good enough that being a mudblood won’t hold her back?” When no one answers him, he hums and says, “I guess we’ll see. Anyway, did you guys notice Daphne’s hair?”

Draco rolls his eyes. Daphne’s red, formerly blonde hair was impossible not to notice. So was Theo’s long-standing crush on Daphne. “She got that creepy house elf thing of hers to get her the potion to color it, I bet. That or it brewed it for her.” 

Blaise groans. “I like Roska, I like Daphne’s hair, and I like my bed. I’d like it a whole lot better if I was asleep right now. We’ll see Daphne and the mudblood tomorrow.” There’s a beat of silence and then he says, “We should probably learn the mudblood’s name.” 

From Draco’s other side, Greg rumbles. “It’s Granger. She’s right after me.” It’s the most words he’s strung together all day. 

The dorm falls silent, but for as tired as he is, Draco can’t sleep. He should have written immediately to tell his father that there was a mudblood in Slytherin. Since he didn’t, he's going to have to assume that his father has heard from other sources and just keep going on like everything is normal. He’ll write his parents at the end of the week with an update on classes, a hello from Severus, and a promise to be a credit to the Malfoy name. 

He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to will himself to sleep. Tomorrow is Transfiguration and Defense, and those will require energy he doesn’t presently have. When all the squeezing does is give him a headache, he resigns himself to being awake and lets his eyes drift open, staring at nothing. 

Between Harry Potter and the mudblood, his first year at Hogwarts is really not turning out the way he thought it would. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things:  
> 1) Daphne is not as huge a part of the fic as she seems in this chapter. Moving forward, the female Slytherins and other students will be represented a little more evenly (and the next chapter has NEVILLE!). She's just the only person willing to interact with Hermione right now and she's really helpful from a narrative standpoint because it's vaguely canon that the Greengrass family is almost as prominent as the Malfoys. 
> 
> 2) The three POVS you get in this chapter are the three that will be represented in the fic. I really really really don't want to give anyone POV whiplash. I've got journeys for Hermione, Pansy, and Draco to all go on and those journeys will intersect quite a bit in sometimes disastrous and hopefully interesting ways.
> 
> Bonus thing! I struggled with naming this fic almost as much as I did writing it. I was really inspired by the idea of a 90s music theme since that's when the story takes place and I wanted to maximize girl power. I landed on Tori Amos and Little Earthquakes because it came out right around the time Hermione would be in First Year and also because it's got lyrics like whoa.


	2. Castles are burning in my heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much to everyone who has read so far! This chapter is longer than the last one and probably about the length that I'm going to be aiming for moving forward. I'm also going to try to stick to an every other week update schedule, but it'll depend on which parts I'm working on and how much has already been written. 
> 
> Thanks again for coming on this ride with me.

Transfiguration is brilliant. It’s also incredibly difficult and Hermione gets the sense that Professor McGonagall’s standards are going to be very high. That’s fine with her, but after class, Daphne looks exhausted and grumpy. A quick glance at the other students reveals that many of them are feeling the same way. Malfoy looks fine though and seems to be going over some of the theory from the lesson with Blaise Zabini. She looks away quickly before they catch her listening to them.  
  
When the group has sufficiently dispersed and it’s just her and Daphne walking down the hall, Daphne murmurs, “I honestly don’t know how I’m going to get through a whole week of this. Why can’t it be Friday already?” 

Hermione is a little out of her depth here. She’s used to other students not liking school. She’s just not used to those same students still liking _her._ “Not Saturday?” Friday they still have classes, though it is a lighter day. 

Daphne shakes her head vigorously. “Friday is flying lessons. First years aren’t allowed to bring their brooms to school and I’m climbing the walls without mine. My sister and I fly every day at home unless there’s a storm. Sometimes we even fly when there is one.” 

Right. Flying lessons. Hermione is deeply skeptical of sitting on a _broomstick_ of all things and allowing it to carry her into the air, but all of her housemates probably already know how to do it, so she’s going to have to catch up. “I’m a little nervous. I’ve never been on a broom before.” 

That seems to wake Daphne up a bit. “Oh, you’ll be fine. It’s really very hard to fall off.” Hermione raises her eyebrows, but Daphne has no idea that what she said was anything other than reassuring, and blithely continues, “Do you know anything about Quidditch? I wouldn’t imagine the Hogwarts history book covers it in much detail, but I haven’t read it so I guess I wouldn’t know.”

Grateful that they’re shifting the topic from _her_ on a broom to other people on brooms, Hermione answers, “No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. Maybe you can go over the basics with me?” 

Daphne beams and they spend their free period and lunch going over the basics of the sport, as well as some of the differences between amateur and professional games and the prominent teams in England and Wales. Millicent joins them after a bit, as does Theodore Nott. Two things rapidly become evident: Millicent really likes Quidditch and Theodore really likes Daphne. Daphne meanwhile...mostly also really likes Quidditch.  
  
Hermione likes having people to sit with at lunch, even if they’re still mostly talking around her. It’s a start. It’s a new feeling and it’s a start.

-  
  
Defense is neither difficult, nor exhausting and Hermione gets a sinking feeling that she’s going to be a little disappointed in Professor Quirrell, but she sits up straight, gives him an encouraging smile when he stutters in her direction, and answers all of his questions flawlessly. She can feel more eyes on her as she leaves. Daphne, walking alongside her, keeps glancing around as if taking note of whose gazes are following them, but when Hermione looks at her, she just says. “You really _are_ good at school, aren't you?” It’s not said meanly, but there’s something in her clear, blue eyes that gives Hermione pause.

After ascertaining that no one can overhear her, she answers, “I’ve never really been good at anything _but_ school. And I know this all must seem simple and introductory for you, but I’m learning magic for the very first time after spending eleven year of my life not knowing it existed. I studied my absolute hardest.” 

There’s something about the twist of Daphne’s lips that Hermione doesn’t like, but she can’t name the feeling that she gets and Daphne’s voice is kind when she says, “Nothing we’ve done this week has been simple. Introductory maybe, but you’re doing better than almost anyone. Didn’t you see that only half the class got their feather in the air yesterday? I wasn’t one of them.” 

“You will be.” Hermione speaks without thinking and Daphne’s eyes widen, another unreadable expression crossing her face before it smooths over into a smile. 

“Well, I don’t know about that, but I appreciate your vote of confidence.” 

Hermione can’t help but wonder if she’s committed some sort of social faux pas, but Daphne is pleasant at dinner and accompanies her to the library like they’d done the previous night. While Hermione browses the stacks, Daphne settles herself at a table and watches, already looking drowsy. She takes out paper and a quill and starts to doodle when Hermione returns with a stack of books. She worries she’s being fearfully boring, but maybe that’s alright? After all, she already agreed that she was going to come in top of the year, bringing glory to Slytherin with academics. Daphne had been supportive of that. 

A crash knocks her out of her musings and she has just enough time to scoot her chair to the side before an avalanche of books comes crashing toward her. From the other side of the nearest shelf, she hears a small voice say, “Oops! Sorry!” 

She knows that voice. “Neville?” He comes around the shelf, cheeks as red as apples. She smiles and he smiles back, relief plain in his eyes. “Would you like to sit down?” 

He looks a little surprised, but he quickly scoops up the books he’d knocked over and thumps into the chair she pulls out for him. Daphne’s brow furrows a little bit and Hermione feels a chill run down her spine. Was that not okay? She’d been trying to be nice, but what if- 

Daphne catches her eye and gives a minute shrug before she relaxes and smiles warmly at Neville. “Hi, Neville. Good to see you again. You and your grandmother attended my mother’s garden party?” 

Hermione finds herself oddly proud that Neville’s voice only trembles a little when he answers, “Yes?” Though he’s frozen like a deer in the middle of the road. 

She saves him from having to come up with anything else to say by pointing at the books he’s gathered. “Were you doing some reading for Herbology?” When he nods, she asks, “How is that class? We have it tomorrow.” 

He grins and she reflects that it’s the first genuine smile she’s seen from him. Then they’re off, pouring over the books he pulled from the shelves as he goes over Professor Sprout’s curriculum. Daphne sits quietly alongside them, focusing on her drawing for the most part, though she’ll occasionally interject with a question or catch Hermione’s eye and smile. It’s the best evening Hermione has spent at Hogwarts yet. In fact, it’s the best evening Hermione can remember having in a long time. 

-

Daphne and the mudblood (Granger, Pansy's mind treacherously supplies) don’t get back to the dorms until dangerously close to curfew. Pansy, Millicent, and Tracey are _absolutely not_ waiting up for them. Tracey just happens to have a copy of _Witch Weekly_ from last month that Pansy is dying to re-read and Millicent has never seen before. So, when Daphne and...Granger waltz in at ten till chittering about Herbology of all things, it’s only a coincidence that Pansy is awake and available to cast a disapproving glance in their direction.  
  
Daphne sends her a flash of an icy glare before her face smooths back over into a smile. “Isn’t that issue of Witch Weekly old?” Granger looks confused and Pansy muses that maybe her Wizarding World education hasn’t extended to periodicals yet. It certainly would explain her fashion sense.  
  
It’s Tracey who answers Daphne. “It’s old, but I wanted to show Millie the interview with Myron Wagtail from the Weird Sisters. He’s got his shirt off in one of the photos and you can see all his tattoos.” 

Millicent gives her a deeply unimpressed look. “That is not the reason I was interested.” She closes the magazine with a snap and hops off Tracey’s bed. “Where were you two? Library again?” 

She’s addressing the question to Granger, who has awkwardly wandered over to her bed and started organizing her bookbag. She looks up, blinking owlishly. “Yes, actually. I, um- I brushed up on Herbology in preparation for tomorrow. It seems like it’s going to be very interesting.” 

Daphne holds up a piece of parchment. “I drew a frog.” It’s a cute frog. Pansy rolls her eyes and goes to get ready for bed. 

Herbology is boring, just like pretty much every other class has been boring. Pansy sits next to Draco and listens to his running commentary of scathing remarks and his litany of all the ways Hogwarts has failed to live up to his expectations. In return, he lets her copy his homework. Astronomy is even more boring and it’s at night, which means she sits in between Draco and Blaise and they take turns elbowing her to stay awake. Daphne and Millicent flank Granger, whose energy never seems to flag and Pansy finds herself a little grateful because she knows Millicent has been looking forward to Astronomy and she’d hate for her to be distracted by a...muggleborn.

Finally, it’s Friday and time for flying lessons. Pansy is a serviceable flyer with no particular affinity for Quidditch, but she loves watching Draco play. There’s a light in his eyes that she almost never sees when his feet are on the ground. Plus, they’ve doubles with Gryffindor and rumour has it that Harry Potter didn’t even know what Quidditch was, much less have any flying experience. With any luck, he’s going to look like a fool and Draco’s going to look like the champion he is. 

It begins, rather inauspiciously, with Draco’s grip being corrected and only gets worse from there. Neville Longbottom is every bit the disastrous disappointment she would have expected him to be and breaks his wrist almost immediately. Then, Parvati of all people decides that she’d rather defend the chubby crybaby over someone she’s known since she was seven and Harry Fucking Potter inserts himself into the situation. He is not, as she expected, a completely incompetent flyer. He’s the opposite. 

Behind her, Pansy can hear Daphne shushing Granger before she can say something to either Draco, Potter, or Professor McGonagall and it sounds like they’re actually making plans to go and check on Longbottom. Pansy can’t even care at this point. Her eyes are fixed on Draco, growing smaller and smaller as Professor McGonagall leads him away, betrayal and disappointment clouding his eyes like a storm that leaves its sky devoid of light. 

-

Word gets out fast that Harry Potter is going to be on the Gryffindor quidditch team and at first, the Slytherins are shocked, then they’re livid. Hermione tolerates the shouting and the swearing the echoes through the common room long enough to finish her Charms essay and then slips out when one of the Quidditch players (Bowl? Boll, maybe? He’d called her a mudblood, she knows that much) stands on a chair to attempt a speech about how this is Slytherin’s year and if McGonagall thinks she can take it away then they would show her. _What_ exactly they will show her, he fails to articulate. Hermione rolls her eyes on her way out.

As she hits the cool air of the hallway, her heart flutters. _I don't really think you should be going places alone, at least not until you've settled in a bit._ She hasn’t settled in at all, truth be told, but she hadn’t thought to ask anyone to come with her and she doesn’t really need an audience for this. Her feet skid to a stop outside the Potions classroom and she knocks on the door before feeling eminently foolish because it’s not like Professor Snape would be in his classroom now. She’s still feeling foolish when the door swings open and he looms over her. 

“Miss Granger.” His voice is flat and she’s sure she’s imagining the hint of resignation in it. “Come in then. How can I help you?” He steps back to allow her into the classroom and shuts the door behind them. 

Hermione screws her courage to the sticking place and says, “It’s about Draco Malfoy, sir.” 

She thinks she sees his eyebrows go up infinitesimally, but she could just be imagining things. He says, “I see. And what has Mister Malfoy done?” 

She bites her lip. This might be a mistake, a horrible mistake, but she’s already here. “He hasn’t done anything, sir. Or, well, he did say some nasty things about Neville Longbottom and he never should have taken his Remembrall, but I suppose that’s sorted now.” 

Now his eyebrows are definitely raised. “You’ve come to report Mister Malfoy for being unkind to another student? You wish him to be disciplined?” 

She’s getting this all wrong. She speaks quickly, before she loses her nerve or mucks it up further. “No, sir. I’m here because I don’t think it’s fair that Harry Potter was placed on the Quidditch team as a first year after doing one dive and Malfoy isn’t even being allowed to try out. His flying was just as capable as Potter’s and he’s got more experience.” Thinking of Daphne, she adds, “Several of the Slytherin first years do.”  
  
His face has settled back into its blank mask. “Be that as it may, Miss Granger, Hogwarts has rules. Gryffindor house choosing to flaunt those rules, par for the course though that may be, is no reason for me to do the same.” 

Hermione wavers for a moment, then nods and turns to go. “I understand. Thank you, Professor.” Just before she hits the door, she turns back. “Professor, _is_ Malfoy going to be disciplined for picking on Neville?” He just stares at her. “Right, never mind. It was inappropriate of me to ask. I’ll just go then.” 

She’s barely entered the common room before she’s practically tackled by the small, crimson-haired blur that is Daphne. “Where the hell have you been?” 

Mindful of making a scene, she heads back to the dormitory and then hesitantly explains her conversation with Professor Snape while the other girls listen curiously. Hermione can practically feel Pansy Parkinson’s eyes burning the spot on her temple where Parkinson seems to have fixed her gaze. They’ve still never had a conversation. 

“I told him there were other first years with Quidditch experience too,” she says, mindful of Daphne’s wide eyes and tight lips. “But, um, he said that just because Gryffindor went around the rules didn’t mean he was going to.” 

Millicent opens her mouth to say something, probably _it’s okay, at least you tried,_ but Pansy cuts her off. “What about Dumbledore?” 

Hermione nods. “That’s what I was thinking too. If Snape won’t go around the rules, then maybe Dumbledore will change the rules. He basically did it for Potter anyway.” 

The rest of the room seems to be stunned into silence at Pansy and Hermione agreeing with each other, but Pansy hasn’t noticed, still thinking out loud. “Obviously you shouldn’t go alone. Why would he care what you have to say? We should send a small group. None of Draco’s friends. They’ll just look biased and Blaise is the only one with any real eloquence. Daphne would be a good choice because of her mum, but everyone knows she’s a bit rabid for Quidditch.”

Daphne nods. “Yeah, that’s fair. Tracey’s dad has pull at the Ministry even if he’s not on the Board of Governors, so she could go. Millie?” 

Millicent holds up her hands. “My family’s useless, but I can go to make up the numbers. Pansy, you’re in?”

She jerks her head in a sharp nod. “I'm in.”  
  
They go to Dumbledore the following morning. In the end, Hermione does most of the talking, flanked by Millicent, Tracey, and Pansy, who very occasionally interject with a comment or clarification regarding Malfoy’s flying abilities or the dive Potter performed. He listens, smiling politely and with the usual twinkle in his eye, then spreads his hands on the desk as if he is nothing so much as a helpless old man and says, “You make an excellent case, but this is a decision best left up to the Heads of House. If Professor Snape does not want to make an exception for Mister Malfoy, it is not my place to overrule him.”  
  
Hermione leaves, feeling some measure of irritated and with no small amount of disappointment. Judging from the faces of the other girls, they’re feeling the same way. Millicent pats her shoulder. “Listen, you tried. Dumbledore was probably never going to listen to us anyway. He doesn’t like Slytherins.” 

“It’s just...it’s not fair.” Hermione tries to keep the tremor out of her voice, but she’s frustrated. Hogwarts should be better than making special exceptions for one student because that one student is famous and in the same house the Headmaster was in.

“Of course it’s not fair. It was never going to be fair.” It sounds like Pansy is trying to keep her voice light, but there is something sharp and tight in her tone. “But you heard him. This is Snape’s call to make. Of course, he’s not going to make it because he’s Draco’s godfather and he can’t be seen favoring him or favoring Slytherin any more than he already does. So what does it matter?” She turns to look at Hermione, who realizes with a start that this is the most eye contact they’ve ever had. “Thanks for trying, I guess.” Then she stomps away.

The rest of them go back to the dorm, where they find Daphne playing cards with Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini. Tracey explains what happened and Hermione pretends she doesn’t notice the openly skeptical looks she’s getting from the boys. When Tracey gets to the part about Pansy’s outburst, Zabini just shakes his head. 

“She’s going crazy trying to cheer him up again. She got like this when we were nine and Draco’s dad said he wouldn’t buy him a horse. She trussed up one of her family’s palominos, bows and flowers all in its mane, then showed up at Malfoy Manor with it, presenting it as a formal gift from the Parkinson family to the Malfoys. Absolutely mad it was and her parents were none too pleased given that it was their prize stallion.” 

Millicent snorts. “I remember that. It’s the only time I’ve actually known her parents to discipline her. Or show any emotion at all.”

Hermione, feeling a little out of her depth, excuses herself from the conversation and goes to read.   
  
\-   
  
She manages to put the Quidditch question out of her mind for a few days. She’s rather swamped with homework and staying on top of her lessons (well, reading ahead). Daphne still accompanies her to the library when she goes, though she naps at the table more often than not. Sometimes Neville joins them and Hermione looks over his Potions work or they talk about the Herbology material. Daphne _definitely_ naps when that happens.

Before she’s really had time to think about it, it’s the following Thursday and her twelfth birthday. She isn’t planning to say anything to the other girls, but her parents send her a card, along with a photo album and a lovely notebook and pen set. 

“What is that?” Daphne is peering over as she reads the card. 

“Oh it’s, um, well my parents sent me a few small things for my birthday.” She smiles weakly, a little embarrassed, though her heart is warm and she’s already thinking about the letter she’ll send back to them. 

“It’s your birthday?” Daphne’s eyes are wide and it takes Hermione a second to realize that the blankness on her face might be surprise. She recovers quickly though and gives her a bright smile. “Well, happy birthday! Honestly, you should have said.” 

Millicent and Tracey are also looking a little surprised, but they too smile and wish Hermione a happy birthday. After a moment (and a loud thump that Hermione suspects was Daphne kicking her chair), so does Pansy. Then Daphne realizes that she’s left her gloves in the dorm and rushes back to get them, so Hermione walks to the greenhouses with Tracey while Pansy and Millicent hang back, apparently having some whispered argument.  
  
Tracey’s dark eyes are soft and solemn when she asks, “Why didn’t you tell anyone it’s your birthday?”  
  
Hermione feels her face grow hot. “I just didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. I never do.” 

Tracey’s expression doesn’t change, but she nods. “Right, I understand. Did you do the reading for today? I didn’t, so I might need your help.” Then they’re off and talking about the curriculum by the time Daphne catches up to them. 

When Hermione gets back to the dorm after Herbology, she’s a little startled to find that Daphne has strung up fairy lights around the room. “Oh, this is lovely. What’s going on?” 

Millicent gives her a look as if she’s trying to figure out if Hermione hit her head at some point. “It’s your birthday. You said so at breakfast. This one-” she indicates Daphne, “has something for you.” 

Daphne produces two pristinely bound books from her bag. “They’re copies from books in my family’s library. One is a history of the Sacred Twenty-Eight with some of the more salacious details left in. The other is the Greengrass family code of conduct. It’s got a bunch of old, weird Pureblood customs in it that I thought you’d find interesting from an academic point of view.” 

Hermione is almost too shocked to speak as she accepts the books, but she finds her voice. “Um, thank you. This is far more than I had expected. You really didn’t have to. I mean, you only found out it was my birthday this morning. How did you-” 

From where she’s reclining on her pillow stack, Pansy huffs and rolls her eyes. “Daphne cheats. Her house elf comes whenever she calls and she had him bring them.” 

“He’s not a house elf!” Daphne snaps. “He’s a haltija. I’ve been telling you this for years.”  
  
Hermione feels her eyes widen a little bit. “House elf? Haltija?” 

Millicent shrugs. “They’re like household servants. House elves are naturally subservient and usually magically bonded to a particular family. Haltija...well, they’re a little different, but it’s the same basic principle.”

Pansy snorts. “The Greengrasses always have to be different.” 

Daphne flushes, glaring at Pansy. “More like the Greengrasses have reason to be concerned about security and have a need for the highest caliber of service available.” 

“ANYWAY.” Millicent sends her two friends quelling looks. “You can meet some house elves tonight when we get the other part of your present.” 

Hermione resists the urge to pinch herself, because this feels like a dream. She contents herself with glancing in Pansy’s direction, but Pansy is painting her toenails, looking for all the world like she wants them to take this conversation elsewhere. Not a dream then. “Millicent, that’s very kind, but this is already more than I was expecting. Please don’t feel like you have to go to any trouble.” 

Tracey is the one who answers. “It’s no trouble. I’ve been dying to raid the kitchens since we got here. My dad did it all the time when he was a student. Apparently the house elves will make you any kind of treat that you want as long as you don’t get caught by any teachers. It’s a godsend for homesick kids or students that miss meals.”

Millicent checks her watch. “I think we’re going to have to sneak down after Astronomy so there will be fewer people around. You don’t have to come for that part. We’re not going to make you break rules on your birthday. If you want to meet the house elves though, that’s where they’ll be.”

Hermione wavers. She _doesn’t_ want to break any rules. On the other hand, her roommates are offering to throw her a birthday party. She’s never had a birthday party thrown by anyone other than her parents, who would make her invite her whole class in the hopes that one or two kids that either didn’t dislike her or didn’t have anything better to do would show up. This is different. 

And, really, if she is going to break rules, her birthday seems like a good time to try it. “I’ll come. It sounds like a lot of fun and I’d like to see these house elves.” 

Daphne grins, blue eyes sparkling, and Millicent gives her a warm smile. “Alright then.”  
  
They don’t get caught sneaking into the kitchens and instead pass a few minutes basking in the warm glow of the kitchen fires and the smell of freshly baked pastries. After some gentle prodding, Hermione hesitantly describes a German chocolate cake to the little elves scurrying about the kitchen wearing Hogwarts pillowcases. They return with a multi-tiered cake that’s much too big for five people and thank her for the pleasure of helping celebrate her birthday. Millicent takes charge of carrying it back to the dorms, which is just as well, because Hermione has a funny feeling in her stomach.  
  
The cake is delicious and perfect. Not even Pansy can find something to complain about; she even thanks Hermione for sharing it after a prolonged glare from Daphne. But Hermione can’t stop thinking about the house elves. After the third time they ask her if there’s something wrong with the cake, Hermione finally says, “It’s great. It’s just...Hogwarts uses slaves?” 

Understanding spreads across Tracey’s face, though the other girls are slower to get it. “Hey, okay, no. You don’t need to look like that. They’re not _slaves_ , not held against their will. It’s complicated and it doesn’t look great, but I promise you they’re not slaves.” 

Hermione swallows hard, feeling like there’s a lump in her throat. “Then what are they?” 

Tracey bites her lip. “They’re a bit like servants, indentured ones maybe. Daphne, can you get Roska back here? He could probably explain better than we can.” 

Daphne’s eyes shift. “I’m sure he could, but three times in one day is too much to hope to get past my mother. Let me give it a shot and then I promise I’ll get him in here one day and have him go into more details.  
  
“So, house elves are very powerful. I mean, you saw them make your cake in no time. The thing is, they’re also very peaceful, which means that they would pretty much be in constant danger from predators and unsavory types if they weren’t bonded with wizards. So they do that and then take care of things like household tasks and stuff that’s easy for them to do quickly, but would be more laborious for wizards.” She looks at Pansy, who gives her a nod of assent. “Pansy’s parents travel most of the year and her house elves basically run their estate. For most wizarding households, and I guess Hogwarts too, they’re like members of the family.” 

Some of the tightness in her chest has eased. “Okay, I guess that makes sense. I’ll try to spend a little more time with the elves so I can better understand. I’d very much like to meet Roska too, whenever you can arrange it. Haltija sound very interesting.” Pansy rolls her eyes at that. Apparently, she isn’t Roska’s biggest fan.  
  
Tracey gives her a shaky smile. “Believe me, Hermione. I could have just stayed in New York with my mother and gone to regular school there and that’s exactly what I’d have done if I thought the Wizarding World was running on slave labour.”  
  
Hermione finds that she isn’t totally convinced but it’s enough for her to relax for the night and enjoy her birthday party. She and Daphne take the leftover cake to the boys’ dorm and earn a shy ‘thank you’ from Gregory Goyle upon dropping it off. Hermione had been hoping Theodore Nott would be the one to answer the door, if only so she could see if Daphne finally noticed how red he turned when she was looking straight at him, but she’ll take Gregory. He’s quiet and seems to work very hard to keep up with his friends. She’s none too sure about Vincent Crabbe, who is louder and lazier, but he seems attached at the hip to Goyle and Malfoy, so there must be a measure of loyalty there. 

She falls asleep with a full stomach, a warm heart, and her mind all a-jumble.   
  
-

The next few weeks are so busy that she doesn’t have time to do much other than study. She does visit Professor Snape once more to ask if he’s reconsidered allowing Malfoy to try out for the team, but he glares at her so fiercely that she leaves without waiting for his answer. 

Daphne has finally started letting her go to the library by herself and, though she feels guilty, she actually does get more done that way. She still meets up with Neville on occasion, but he’s taken to spending more time with Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. It’s good, she thinks, for him to have friends in his house, even if they are a little obnoxious and no help at all to Neville when it comes to schoolwork.   
  
The Halloween feast sneaks up on her. She’d been hoping to get in a little more reading before dinner, but Daphne takes her book and shepherds her through the door and up to the Great Hall, insisting that they can’t be late for this one. When they reach the hall, Hermione realizes what Daphne was talking about; it’s the most extravagantly decorated she’s ever seen it, with glowing jack-o-lanterns suspended in the air and the tables piled high with every treat she could possibly imagine. It’s haunting, beautiful, and shockingly also quite fun.  
  
Hermione sits down and digs in, listening as the other Slytherins share Halloween legends from Hogwarts or their homes. Some are scary, but most of them end up rather funny by the end. She’s watching Zabini and Tracey re-enact the story of Sir Nicholas becoming “Nearly-Headless” when their laughter is interrupted by a low voice coughing out “ _Mudblood!”_ behind them. Hermione turns to see two of the Slytherin seventh year boys with a sixth year trailing after them. They’re not standing very close to her, but a cold trickle of fear runs down her spine anyway. 

“What did you say?” Tracey’s voice is a steel blade, but the boys are unmoved. The one in the lead, a dark haired boy with broad shoulders and freckles, grins. 

"I said, it seems to me the mudbloods need to learn their place and this one's forgotten." The boy's eyes dart over her shoulder and she turns to see Draco Malfoy shrugging, a blank expression on his face. By the time she turns back, the seventh year has already transfigured her pumpkin juice into a greasy mud-colored sludge and she doesn't have time to react as he upends it over her head, cackling like a jackdaw.

Hermione's face grows hot and she can feel her eyes sting. Daphne is shouting, but it feels very far away. Millicent moves to help her clean herself off, but she brushes her off and stands, shuffling back from the table. "I've got it." She doesn't, but she can't let them see her cry. 

She bolts for the door. There's a girls bathroom on her way back to the dungeons and she knows it will be deserted at this time. She's barely through the door before she's leaning up against a sink and sobbing, trying to clean the oily mud out of her hair. 

_He'd shrugged. The boy had looked right at him for permission and he'd shrugged._ Hermione has never uttered the F word in her life, but in this moment, she desperately wants to tell Draco Malfoy that he can go fuck himself. 

She's not sure how long she sits there cleaning her hair and going over every interaction she's had with Malfoy, with all of them, trying to figure out where she went wrong. She's gotten almost all of the grit and sludge out of her hair when she hears a shuffling and braces herself to either make an excuse or a run for it. Then the smell hits her. 

Standing in between her and the door is a fully grown mountain troll and it looks angry. Or hungry. No, it's advancing on her and yeah, it definitely looks hungry. She brandishes her wand and tries to make herself look big, but the troll isn't fooled and suddenly she can't remember a single spell. 

There's a commotion at the other end of the bathroom and she hears Millicent's voice saying, "She has to be in here. It's the only bathroom on the way back to the dungeons."

She tries to scream to warn them but the only thing that comes out is a terrified squeak and that causes the troll to snarl and come closer. In the next moment, there's a flurry of footsteps and Daphne, Millicent, Pansy, and Tracey come trotting into view. They'd come for her. 

Judging by their expressions, they might be regretting it. 

Pansy screams and looks like she’s about to run, but at that moment, Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Neville Longbottom come clattering in behind them. Weasley goes pale when he sees the troll and Neville looks like he’s about to faint. Potter, strangely, just huffs a breath through his nose and says, “I think she knows about the troll now, Neville.” 

The troll grunts and starts advancing towards them, which means its back is to Hermione. She wracks her brain for something that can help, clings onto a lifeline from one her of books, summons all the magic she can feel within herself, layers over her anger from this evening and all the complicated emotions she’s held inside her since learning she was a witch and screams, “ _STUPEFY!”_

A jet of red light leaves her wand and strikes the troll between its massive shoulders. It drops its club, wavering, but it does not fall. Hermione sags against the sink. She’s not going to be able to cast another one and the troll is slowly turning toward her. Luckily, Potter and Millicent seem to have picked up on the idea and are desperately trying to cast stunners of their own. 

Daphne, meanwhile, has levitated the troll’s club and is angling it above its head with Tracey’s guidance. They drop the club at the exact same moment as another stunner whips across the room, strikes a mirror, and ricochets into the troll’s face. It collapses on the ground, bleeding from a shallow head wound and thoroughly stunned. 

Millicent steps gingerly around it and offers her arm to Hermione. After a moment, she takes it. "Thank you. Thank you for coming after me."

Millicent snorts and turns her attention to the cluster of snakes and lions huddled in distinct factions on the other side of the troll. "Nice stunner, Potter." 

Potter gives her a blank look. "That wasn't me. I had never heard that spell until Granger cast it. Didn't even get sparks out of my wand."

"It was me." 

Suddenly the biggest surprise of the night isn't a seventh year dumping mud on her. It isn't almost being eaten by a mountain troll. It isn’t even Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom, and Ron Weasley following her into the girls’ bathroom. No, the biggest surprise of the night is that Pansy Parkinson not only raised her wand in Hermione's defense, but landed the bloody spell. 

"Well...fuck," she breathes, and the tension in the room melts into laughter. Which, of course, is when Professors Snape and McGonagall walk in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes!  
> 1) Daphne's house elf explanation is messy and flawed and that's on purpose. She's a deeply privileged eleven-year-old who hates studying. When Roska (Daphne's haltija) shows up, he'll give a more comprehensive explanation that won't leave Hermione any happier.  
> 2) I really wanted to squeeze in a Draco POV, but this chapter was already so long. Rest assured, the next chapter will have much more Draco and the boys.


	3. Let's hear what you think of me now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a day late and it fought me every step of the way. Some of these scenes have been written for five months and some of them were finished five minutes ago. 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me! I hope you enjoy.

Pansy keeps her spine straight and she very determinedly does _not_ look at Professor Snape as he escorts them back to the dungeons. He doesn’t speak, so they don’t either. 

They hit the entrance to the common room and she thinks they might actually be getting out of this, but he keeps her and Granger back. Her eyes dart to the side and Granger is standing just as tall as she is, hands folded neatly behind her back, expression unreadable. 

After a long moment, Professor Snape speaks. “You both acquitted yourselves well tonight, although I trust you understand that under normal circumstances, a stunning spell would be grounds for severe punishment.” Granger pales at that, but just nods. “You should be proud. It is a difficult spell to perform with minimal training.” He leaves out that he knows Pansy’s been taught to duel alongside his godson. “You’re certain neither of you require a visit to the hospital wing?” 

Granger answers, “No, sir. Thank you,” while Pansy just shakes her head. 

“That will be all then. Go get some rest. And Miss Parkinson?” Pansy turns, getting a sinking feeling that she already knows what he’s going to say. “Tell Mister Malfoy that I will expect him in my office at nine a.m.”

“Yes sir.” 

The common room is quiet when they enter and Pansy can almost taste the heavy tension in the air. The other Slytherins don’t know about the troll yet, which means they’ll think that Professor Snape brought the girls back because they went after Hermione when Avery pulled his stunt with the mud. Neither option is particularly ideal; Pansy doesn’t want to draw attention from the upper years if she can help it, so she’d rather they didn’t know she was one of four first years who took down a mountain troll, but she also doesn’t want them thinking she’s palling around with Granger. Now here they are walking in together.  
  
Pansy huffs and leads the way to the dormitory with Granger trailing behind her. The other girls are talking quietly when they enter, but their volume crescendos when Pansy and Granger walk in. 

“Pansy, what the fuck?” That’s Millicent, her normally measured tone strained and a little pitchy. 

Daphne laughs. “My question too, but first, are you two okay? That’s a huge spell. You have to be wiped.” 

Granger sits down on her bed, but she doesn’t slump or lay down. Instead, she arranges herself at the cross legged and sits facing the other girls. “I was, but I think I’ve still got too much adrenaline. It’s like I’m tired but I can’t rest.”

Pansy feels much the same, but she doesn’t voice it, turning instead to arrange her pillows the way she likes. 

“Pansy?” Tracey’s soft, melodic voice breaks into her thoughts. “Are you okay?” 

Pansy schools her expression into a smile before she turns back around and climbs onto her pillow pile. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve cast a stunner before.” 

Daphne huffs. “Yeah, at a target. That’s different.” 

Pansy rolls her eyes. “The only different thing is that I actually hit what I was aiming at.” 

Millicent, sounding more normal, scoffs. “You hit the mirror and it rebounded.” 

“It still worked.” What, now _Granger_ was speaking up for her? “It was really impressive and just in time. Daphne and Tracey were doing great with the club, but it might not have been enough to knock the troll unconscious. You saved my life, all three of you.” Oh, no.

Daphne saves Pansy from having to answer. “Of course we did. Slytherins stick together.” Then, because Daphne is some kind of saint, she pivots the subject. “How about Neville bringing Potter and Weasley to come get you though? I didn’t see that coming.” 

Granger’s eyes go a little wide. “I didn’t either. It was very kind of him and I’ll have to be sure to thank him. Although…” She trails off and Millicent waves at her to finish her sentence. “Well, they weren’t very much help, were they?” 

_This_ Pansy can comment on. “Not at all. Weasley stood there like a useless lump. I thought Longbottom was going to pee his pants, and for someone who supposedly killed the Dark Lord when he was a baby, Potter kind of sucked at spellcasting.”  
  
Daphne giggles, though she looks like she feels guilty about it. “He tried. He said he’d never heard of a stunning spell before. I guess I’m kind of surprised about that, but he really doesn’t seem all that special except for Quidditch.” Not Quidditch again. “About Neville though- I think it was rather brave of him to go after Hermione and he stayed even though he was scared. Maybe that’s why he ended up in Gryffindor?” 

Millicent nods. “He took a while to sort. I wonder if the Hat was deciding to go Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. Certainly seems like he’s loyal to his friends” She turns to Granger. “ _You_ were practically a hat-stall. Where else did the Hat want to put you?” 

Granger shrugs. “I think Ravenclaw was the obvious choice, but it said I could do well in all four of the houses for different reasons.” 

Unbidden, a small smirk ghosts across Pansy’s face. “So, obviously, you picked the best one.” 

Granger returns the smirk and Pansy feels something clench in her stomach, not dread exactly, but this is unsteady. Uncharted. If Granger notices, she doesn’t react. “Obviously.” 

Daphne worries her lip. “Should we talk about the Draco of it all?” Tracey frowns and Millicent grimaces. 

Pansy feels the smile slip from her face, but to her own surprise, she’s not angry on Draco’s behalf, just thoughtful. Thoughtful and tired, but sleep is a luxury reserved for girls who don’t talk to mudbloods and stun mountain trolls while their best friend is getting in trouble with his Head of House and his godfather (inconveniently, the same person). 

Granger shakes her head, but she’s a little too vigorous and one of her curls catches her in the eye. “Ow. No, it’s fine. We don’t have to.” The four of them stare at her in silence while she blinks rapidly and then looks around at them the way Pansy imagines a rabbit would look at a family of foxes. “Really, we don’t. I won’t say it didn’t sting a little that he didn’t stick up for me when he had a pretty obvious chance, but we’re not friends and I wouldn’t expect him to.”

Pansy sighs, staring hard at her fingernails as if they hold some kind of answer. She can feel Millicent looking at her for a long moment like she’s waiting for Pansy to speak. Whatever she’s looking for, she gives up and turns back to Hermione, saying, “The thing you have to understand about Draco is for the first eleven years of his life, everything was decided for him. For all of us really, but Draco especially because his father is very important and Draco is his only son.” 

Daphne picks up the thread. “You know about the Sacred Twenty-Eight?” Granger nods and Pansy thinks _of course she bloody does. You gave her a book. “_ Well, the Malfoys are some of the oldest, the purest, the richest, and by extension, the most powerful.” She blinks, squeezing her eyes shut for a full second before adding, “My family is up there too. The thing is, there’s not _one_ thing that makes a family powerful. History helps. Money helps more. There are a lot of people that will say blood purity helps even more than that. What really does it is politics.” 

Daphne looks at Tracey, probably because her dad works with Draco’s dad. Tracey nods, though her forehead wrinkles and she waits for a moment before she starts to speak. “Right. Okay. So, politics. All that stuff Daphne listed is all part of politics and it decides who wants to talk to you and who wants to work with you and who will give you money or listen to your opinion. So Draco’s dad and my dad graduated Hogwarts at around the same time, did basically the same Ministry internships, but my dad married a muggle and now he has to kiss up to Draco’s dad at parties in order to get his department’s budget approved by _another_ guy who’s also kissing up to Draco’s dad.”

Granger’s voice is dry when she says, “Yes, I have rather picked up on the ‘everyone kisses up to Draco’s dad’ motif.” 

Daphne starts again, “So the thing with politics is that-” 

Unable to take any more, Pansy cuts her off. “You’re telling this wrong.” She immediately receives an expression of hopeful curiosity from Granger and three exasperated _okay, so you do it then_ looks from her friends. Fine. She _will_ do it. “Avery knows Draco’s dad because his mum and dad ran in the same circle with him eleven years ago. It wasn’t a great circle to run in and it didn’t end well, but Avery’s dad still hangs around Draco’s dad like a leech and presumably the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So Avery looked at Draco to see if he’d stick up for you because then he'd run and tell his dad who would run and tell Draco’s dad.”  
  
Granger’s eyes are a little wide, but she’s nodding. “And it would be bad for Draco to be seen sticking up for a muggleborn. He’d get in trouble with his father.” She takes a deep, shaky breath.

Millicent hums. “It might be too that his father gets in trouble. That’s the politics thing. You only have power for so long as people will listen to you and do what you say. So he’s got plenty of money, but that’s not really why people do what he says.”

“You’re talking around it. Even you, Pansy.” Tracey’s wrapped her blanket around her shoulders like a shawl and she’s sucking on a sugar quill she pulled from somewhere. 

“Would it help,” and Granger’s voice is soft, with just a hint of tremble, “if I told you that I already know Lucius Malfoy was tried for being a Death Eater? There are history books in the library with all of the records if you know where to look.” 

Daphne sighs. “We weren’t going to mention it. I guess you know about Vince’s mum and dad, Goyle’s dad, and Theo’s dad then.” 

“And my dad, aunt, and uncle,” Millicent adds. Granger nods. 

Pansy feels a prickling at the base of her spine. “The Imperius thing- it’s not total bullshit. You-Know-Who _did_ use it. But, um.”  
  
“But pretty much everyone you just named signed on willingly or at the very least, they don’t like mudbloods.” Granger’s tone is steadier now, even a little dry again. “Anything I’m missing?”

Tracey gestures to Pansy and Daphne with her sugar quill, “Their parents weren’t Death Eaters, but they’d be in trouble too if word got out about what happened tonight.” 

“It won’t?” Granger looks a little surprised at that. 

“It won’t.” Daphne confirms. “Not past the student body anyway. Hogwarts doesn’t send letters home unless it absolutely has to. Dumbledore hates outside influence and parental involvement usually means Board involvement.” 

“I probably wouldn’t get in that much trouble.” Pansy says before she can stop herself. “My house elves handle the mail.” Binny had brought her Hogwarts letter straight to her room, though he’d asked if she wanted to wait for her mum and dad to get back from their trip before she opened it. 

She hadn’t. Her parents have never come back from a trip on time. 

“Hermione,” Daphne’s eyes are sharper now, the piercing blue they’d been when she shouted down Avery in the Great Hall. “You-Know-Who is dead. Avery is a bully and Draco is a politician’s son, but no one is a Death Eater because there aren’t any more. They don’t have a Dark Lord to follow. Being in Slytherin means you’re going to be around a lot of people who wish that wasn’t the case, but it doesn’t mean you don’t belong here and if I got in trouble because of what happened tonight, I could take it.” 

Pansy is suddenly so tired. She wants to talk to Draco. Scratch that. She needs to talk to Draco. She has to tell him to go talk to Snape tomorrow. She stands slowly, ignoring the spots at the edge of her vision. The stunner and this conversation seem to have stripped the vigor from her bones and her feet feel like they weigh ten stone. It doesn’t matter because she has to move. 

“Pans, what are you doing? Sit back down.” Millicent’s voice is gently reproachful and Pansy muses that she must look as tired as she feels. 

“I’m supposed to tell Draco to see Snape tomorrow.” She stops before she hits the door and speaks without turning around. “Granger, what happened tonight will probably happen again. We’ll be ready next time.” 

It’s Theo who answers the door when she knocks and he doesn’t let her in. 

“Draco’s out for the night or at least he’s pulled his curtains shut and he’s not talking.” The worry lines creasing his forehead are out of place on his normally soft face. “Rumour has it you stunned the troll after it went after Granger?” 

It takes almost all her energy to keep her voice halfway normal when she says, “Shouldn’t spread rumours, Nott. After all, you never know when one about you might make its way to Daphne.” She’s rewarded with crimson ears and sputtering as the worry lines on his face dissolve into mortification. She sticks her tongue out. “Make sure Draco knows Snape wants to see him at nine.”

When she falls asleep, she doesn’t dream. 

-

The castle is quiet at nine in the morning on a Saturday. Draco had left without waking his roommates, though he knows Crabbe and Goyle will be a little cross. They don’t like going places without him, but they also don’t like waking up early if they don’t have to and he’s not going to ask them to stand outside Severus’ office and wait for him. They can go to breakfast and he’ll catch up with them. 

He’s heard what happened after Granger ran out of the Great Hall. It seems like most people don’t know yet (or don’t care), but Blaise found out somehow and told their whole dorm how Granger had landed a stunner on the troll, and when that didn’t work, Pansy hit it with another stunner while her roommates dropped the troll’s own club onto its head. 

He knows he should have talked to Pansy when she came by. He’ll find her later and say...something. For now, he’s got to figure out what he’s going to say to Severus and that would be a lot easier if he had any idea what Severus was going to say to him. 

Fletcher Avery is seventeen years old, old enough to remember his father coming home in Death Eater robes, wine-drunk and bloodstained. Draco has eavesdropped on the stories he and some of the other boys tell. Draco has eavesdropped on every closed-door meeting his father has held at Malfoy Manor. There is a lot he doesn’t understand and some he thinks he doesn’t want to, but he’s pretty sure the facts are thus: Many people are still loyal to the Dark Lord; his father is one of these people; his father likes keeping these people around; and then there’s a big blank space in his mind where a logical next conclusion would be. 

Why does any of this matter? The Dark Lord isn’t coming back. The muggles aren’t storming the barriers to the Wizarding World demanding that they hand over their magic. There’s a mudblood in Slytherin. Avery turned her pumpkin juice into something disgusting and poured it on her and Draco is expected to care and more than that he’s expected to know _why_ he should care. His father wouldn’t care. His father has better things to occupy his mind with. 

Avery is expecting a letter of recommendation from his father for a lower level Ministry position. He’ll get mailroom probably and he’ll be grateful.  
  
All Draco had wanted for his first year was to be at the top of his classes and the best flyer out of all of his year. Even in his wildest fantasies, he’d never allowed himself to imagine a teacher taking note of his prowess and demanding he be placed on his house Quidditch team as a first year. He would try out in second year and make the team. Father would buy them racing brooms to celebrate. 

He’d had _plans_. Then along came Potter with Quidditch and Granger with school and now he doesn’t see enough of Millicent or Daphne anymore and Parvati hates all of them and nothing is working out the way it was supposed to. 

His stomach growls and he sighs. Eating breakfast would have been smart, but he’d been too anxious to get up, get moving, get this conversation over with. He has a feeling this isn’t going to be the kind of conversation where he can ask Severus to call a house elf to bring some coffee and a danish. 

The door is closed when he arrives at Severus’ office. It’s 8:45. He knows he should just wait, but he also knows that Severus is up before sunrise most days. He’s in there working or finishing his breakfast. He makes it three minutes more before he gives in and knocks.

The door opens on his third knock revealing Severus seated at his desk. He’s writing in a notebook, probably a new potion formula if Draco had to guess. He doesn’t look up as Draco steps gingerly into the room. “Close the door behind you, Mister Malfoy.” 

Draco’s stomach clenches and he’s no longer hungry now that there’s apprehension sitting in place of the hunger like a lead weight. Severus only calls him “Mister Malfoy” in class. He has the overwhelming feeling that he’s here to learn a lesson after all.

He closes the door carefully, then crosses to the chair in front of Severus’ desk and sits. He realises belatedly that he maybe should have remained standing until invited to sit, but what’s done is done.

Severus closes the notebook and sets it aside, raising his head to regard Draco with dark, clear eyes that give absolutely none of his thoughts away. They sit in silence for almost a full minute before he finally speaks.

“You’re aware that Mister Avery was a Chaser on the Quidditch team?” Draco nods. “He’s been removed from that position due to poor House loyalty and even poorer judgment.”

His godfather’s eyes narrow and he folds his hands in front of him. “You’re also aware that since early September, Miss Granger has been lobbying for you to be allowed to try out for the Slytherin Quidditch team as she maintains that your flying in the first week of school was at par with Mister Potter’s? In spite of the fact that your display of ability took place while you were harassing someone she considers her friend?” 

Draco’s throat is too tight for him to speak so he just nods again. 

“Under different circumstances, I might have been convinced to give you a chance to replace the unfortunate Mister Avery. I trust you also understand why that will not be happening?” 

Draco knows what he’s supposed to say, which is why his heart drops when what he stammers out instead is, “But she’s a muggleborn and you know that Avery knows my father _and-”_

“What I _know_ , Draco, is that when given the power to make a choice, you chose complacency and it resulted in harm coming to your housemate. A housemate that has up until this point gone out of her way to support you despite your bullying of her friend and complete indifference to her. Thanks to the abysmal timing of the incident, your judgement along with Mister Avery’s could have cost Miss Granger more than her dignity. It could have cost her life.” 

Draco clenches his hands into fists, digging his nails into his palms as he tries to keep his expression calm. Where the weight of his father’s disappointment is a millstone around his neck, Severus’ disappointment is more like a whip. It catches him off-guard, stings like fire across his heart, and he knows he’s going to feel it for a long time. “I understand, sir.” He bites his lip and meets Severus’ eyes slowly. “I won’t let Slytherin house down again.” 

He rises to go, stopping short when Severus asks, “Do you intend to apologise to Miss Granger?”

Draco knows what he’s supposed to say to that too, but apparently today he’s going all-in on wrong answers. “I don’t know. Do you think I should?”  
  
When Severus’ only answer is a cool stare through dark, unreadable eyes, Draco takes his leave. 

He’s not surprised to find Vincent and Greg waiting for him outside, but he’s surprised Blaise and Theo are with them. Blaise puts an arm around his shoulder as they fan out around him in the hallway. “We saved you some croissants from breakfast.” As if to demonstrate, Theo pulls a napkin-wrapped chocolate croissant out of his robe pocket and passes it over. Draco’s hunger is back, but the lead weight in his stomach also hasn’t gone anywhere, so he doesn’t do much more than pick at the pastry as they make their way toward the grounds.  
  
“Do you want to talk about it?” Theo’s warm brown eyes are wide and there’s a small furrow in his brows. No, he doesn’t want to talk about it, but Theo is in his face _caring_ and concern is radiating off of Vince and Greg in waves. At least Blaise is being normal. 

Draco stops when they reach a hill overlooking the Quidditch pitch and takes a deep breath of the cold November air. It’s just shy of painful and clears his head perfectly. “Avery’s off the team.”

“Well that makes sense. He really fucked up.” Blaise’s tone is light, but there’s a question in it. 

Draco grits his teeth. “I was chided for not coming to the aid of a fellow Slytherin. I’m not in trouble, I don’t think, but he wasn’t pleased.” 

They’re all quiet. There’s an implication there, one that not even Vince and Greg are dense enough to miss. Slytherin trumps blood status and this is coming from the mouth of the man who was, by most accounts, a prince among Death Eaters. The working class nobody with little political savvy and even less tact who had inexplicably risen to the right hand of the Dark Lord himself. 

Lucius Malfoy hadn’t dictated the choice of Draco’s godfather. Draco isn’t even sure he _likes_ Severus, though he knows Narcissa does. 

Draco expects it to be Blase who speaks first. Blaise always has something clever to say or a way to swiftly and smoothly change the subject. His arm is still around Draco’s shoulders. 

Instead, it’s Vince who speaks, his voice the low rumble that’s his answer to soft. “Well that’s it then. We’ll just help next time someone comes after Granger for being a mudblood.” He pauses, thinks. “Or a swot. She’ll probably get picked on for that too.” He bumps his shoulder against Greg’s. It’s minute enough that no one would notice who wasn’t looking for it.

On Draco’s other side, Theo drops down to sit in the grass. Dracos joins him after Blaise gives him a little shove and the others settle around them. Theo hands him a second croissant, butter this time. “I think this means we probably can’t call her a mudblood anymore.” 

Draco considers this, the warm dough slowly replacing the icy lead in his stomach. “I need to talk to Pansy.” 

Blaise nods. “Probably a good idea. She was there after all. Can’t believe with her aim she still stunned the fucking troll.” Blaise was the first to find out what happened in the bathroom. Blaise is the first to find out everything and Draco still has no idea how he does it.

Draco snorts. “Don’t say that to her face. She’ll hex you. Or she’ll deck you and I’m honestly not sure which would hurt more.” 

Blaise gives him a cheeky grin. “You like her.” 

“Of course I like her. She’s my best friend- friend that’s a girl, that is.” He hastily shoves the rest of the croissant into his mouth. 

“No, I mean, you _like her_ like her.” Draco chokes and Vince thumps him on the back.  
  
Theo is staring at Blaise with alarm. “Are we supposed to like girls now?” Draco is tempted to point out that his crush on Daphne is the size of the Quidditch pitch, but that would be unkind, so he refrains. 

Yes, kindness is definitely the reason he doesn’t point it out and not fear that keeping this line of conversation open will mean that he has to address Blaise’s accusation. 

When the last remnants of croissant have ceased their assault on his breathing, he scoffs and says, “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s our first year at Hogwarts. We have better things to do than like girls. We have to place bets on Quidditch for one. Has anyone seen Slytherin’s reserve chaser play?”

-

They manage to pass a couple of days in relative peace. She tells Daphne that she’d rather not discuss what happened at the Halloween feast if she doesn’t have to and Daphne disappears with Pansy and Millicent for a few hours while Hermione and Tracey do their potions homework. Come Monday, no one asks her about Halloween. In fact, no one much looks at her at all, which is somewhat of a relief. 

Pansy is still sitting next to Draco in every class and while that’s nothing new, they’re reprimanded for talking much more frequently than usual because they can’t seem to cease whatever argument they’re having in half-sentences and whispers (and at one point, she thinks, a bit of French).  
  
Her first real indication that things are not going completely back to normal is when Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini join her and Daphne in the library on Monday night. They don’t say anything out of the ordinary, both sitting quietly and occasionally exchanging a few words about the Charms homework, but it feels like they’re working up to something. 

She says as much to Daphne when the two of them go wandering to find an obscure Charms theory text and Daphne shrugs. “I think this is their version of ‘friendly’ maybe? Although Blaise is usually more talkative.” 

Instead of going to the library the following night, she and Daphne walk down to watch the Slytherin team’s Quidditch practice. They’re pulling extra hours because they’re trying to get a new player up to speed before the upcoming weekend’s game. It doesn’t appear to be going well. 

After a few minutes of Daphne cheerfully explaining the plays the team is running while Hermione tries to keep them straight, Pansy joins them in the stands. 

“They replaced Avery with Warrington?” Daphne nods. “I can’t see that working out well.” 

“It’s going better than I’d have thought, but the game is going to be tough.” 

Hermione doesn’t really feel like she has anything to contribute, so she remains silent, eyes fixed on Warrington as he tries to keep up with Flint and Pucey. 

“Hey, Granger.” Pansy’s eyes are sharp when she trains them on Hermione’s face, but her voice is soft and steady. “Draco knows he fucked up.” 

_Well, I should certainly hope so._ Hermione bites back the first retort that comes to mind and says instead, “Okay. I guess that’s good? Really, Pansy, it’s not that big of a deal.” 

“It’s a little bit of a big deal.” Daphne’s facing the pitch still when she interjects. 

Instead of being grateful for the backup, Pansy just looks more aggrieved. “He’s the heir to the ancient and noble house of Malfoy and the ancient and noble house of Black and I know you’ve read enough that you understand what’s expected of pureblood heirs and I know you’re smart enough to know that it _sucks.”_ She clears her throat, then tilts her head at Daphne. “Just ask the heiress of the ancient and noble house of Greengrass.” 

“Leave me out of this,” Daphne replies pleasantly. Hermione isn’t surprised though. She’s seen the corners of Daphne’s mouth tighten every time she receives an owl from her mother. 

“Okay, Pansy, I get it. It’s very hard being rich, privileged, and having people expect things of you. It may shock you that it’s still possible for people to expect things of you when you’re _not_ rich and influential and trust me, that sucks too. At some point, you have to decide what you expect from yourself, because you are never, ever going to live up to every unfair expectation that gets dumped on you by an adult that thinks they know best.” 

Hermione is cold and irritated and she finds herself wishing she’d just gone to the library after all. There’s no way Pansy would have followed her there just to give her a speech about how hard it is to be a rich jerk with lots of friends. 

Pansy, for her part, is looking mildly impressed after Hermione’s tirade. “Right. That’s good. Tell him that.” Then she scampers back down the stands and trots back into the castle. 

Daphne sighs. “She’s scheming, subtle as a brick. Just ignore her til you can’t.” 

Hermione raises an eyebrow. “What, like when she shows up at my front door with a horse wearing a sign that says ‘Forgive Draco Malfoy’?” 

Daphne laughs. “It’ll be something like that. Don’t knock the Parkinson Palominos though. They’re excellent horses.” 

Hermione feels her shoulders sag. “I’m not even upset with him. I didn’t ask Pansy to go and talk to him. I just want things to go back to normal.”

Daphne pats her on the shoulder. “Nothing’s normal around here.”

The next morning, she isn’t really surprised when the seating arrangements have changed in Herbology and instead of her usual table with Daphne, Millicent, and Tracey, she finds herself shuffled over to a table with Malfoy, Goyle, and Zabini while Pansy takes her old spot. She sits down, lays out her things, and begins to harvest her lotus seeds without a word. 

It takes about thirty minutes for Malfoy to break, though both of his friends have been giving him querying looks for twenty-nine of those minutes. “Look, Granger, the thing you’ve got to understand-”

She finds she doesn’t really want to hear what it is she’s _got to_ understand, so she cuts him off. “It’s fine. Pansy talked to me.” 

Apparently that’s the wrong thing to say because he smacks his hand over his face and says, “Oh, what the fuck.” 

She giggles in spite of herself. “Such language from the heir to an ancient and noble pureblood house.”

Zabini laughs out loud at that and even Goyle smiles. Malfoy groans into his hand. “I’m going to kill Pansy.” He shakes his head once as if to clear it and then fixes her with a stare that is just shy of unnerving in its intensity. “I just wanted to say that what happened with Avery won’t happen again.” Something in his face softens then and he follows up with, “And thank you for what you said to Snape and Dumbledore about Quidditch. You didn’t have to do that.” 

Hermione doesn’t trust herself to say something that’s appropriately gracious, so she just nods. Malfoy nods back, but his eyes are fixed over her shoulder and in a few seconds, Pansy is nudging her aside to set her own supplies down. “Tracey needs help with the lotus seeds. They keep messing up her nails.” 

“There’s a spell for that,” Hermione mutters, but she returns to her usual table feeling a little relieved and a little confused.

Behind her, Pansy and Draco are speaking French again. 

-

Hermione will admit, under threat of torture, that she’s a little excited about the first Quidditch game of the year. She’s never been one for sports and she finds the appeal of Quidditch a little incomprehensible, but she’s also never been invited to watch a sports game with friends before. 

The girls have all bundled up in their cloaks and are walking down to the stands, Tracey and Daphne huddled around a small jar of fire that Hermione has conjured while Pansy hangs back to walk with Malfoy and Millicent and Zabini tally last minute bets. Apparently, Slytherin playing their reserve chaser and Gryffindor playing an eleven year old seeker has given them pretty even odds if the bets are anything to go on. Hermione didn’t put one down. For one thing, she doesn’t have much pocket money, though she knows her parents would send her more if she asked. For another, she’s pretty sure she would have wanted to put money on Gryffindor and there’s no way that will be well received.

The game starts auspiciously enough. Slytherin seems to have a strong team, even with a less experienced chaser. She finds herself mostly watching Potter, who is floating above the action and seems to be making an effort to stay out of the way. _Not so different from class_ her mind supplies and she files the thought away for later. He certainly hasn’t been what she’d expected so far. 

Out of nowhere, Potter begins to jerk and weave erratically and for a moment she just attributes it to being in over his head playing a sport he's only just learned on an expensive racing broom he's had for a month. Then she feels an elbow in her side. 

“It’s a jinx. Someone’s jinxing his broom.” Daphne is paler than normal, her splash of freckles standing out across the bridge of her nose. “Look for an unbroken eye line.”

Hermione casts her eyes across to the seventh years, but they’re all shouting and jeering. Then she looks toward the teachers. Professor Snape is maintaining an unbroken stare and he’s looking straight at Potter. “Daphne, look at Snape.”

Daphne follows her gaze and her eyes widen. “He wouldn’t.” 

Millicent prods her with her elbow. “He’s not. Look at Quirrell. Unbroken eye line and he’s sweating in the middle of November. Snape’s probably countering the jinx.” 

Around them, people are shouting, laughing. Lee Jordan is saying something as the commentator but it’s drowned out. No one is _doing_ anything. No one, that is, except for Professor Snape whose eyes are locked on Potter, and Professor Quirrell, whose sweat stains are visible even from where she’s sitting. 

“Oh, I’ll make him sweat,” escapes her lips and before Hermione can question her own boldness she takes off running through the stands with Daphne swearing and sprinting after her. She stumbles as they career toward the teacher stands but Daphne catches her shoulder and pulls her up. 

“Hermione, I really hope you’ve got a plan.”  
  
Hermione’s heart is pounding and when she looks back on this, she’ll be the first to admit that she gets tunnel vision sometimes in high stress situations. Usually those situations are pop quizzes and not attempted murder, but it applies. 

Her jar of fire is clenched tightly in her hand and it hasn’t gone out. When she looks back on this, after she sifts through the bewilderment at her own behavior and the not-small amount of mortification, she’ll find a pride so deep and all-consuming that she can ride it faster and higher than any broomstick. Hermione Granger does not stand idly by. Hermione Granger gets things done. Hermione Granger’s fire does not go out. 

In the moment, however, she’s mostly focused on shushing Daphne while she allows the trailing hem of Quirrell’s robe to dip into her fire jar. It catches and they run like hell. 

In their haste to get back to their seats before someone notices, Hermione trips and falls into Daphne, who goes sprawling into Pansy’s lap. Millicent catches Hermione before she can hit the ground. For a moment, she’s terrified that the scene they’ve caused will out them as the ones responsible for the commotion happening in the teachers section, but Harry Potter graciously provides a distraction by almost eating the Snitch. 

She supposes she’s glad that her first Quidditch game was memorable. 

-

It is perhaps just Hermione’s luck that Millicent had been sitting next to Blaise Zabini who had to dive out of the way to avoid being trampled when she and Daphne had scrambled back to their seats. He wants an explanation, though he agrees to wait until they’re back in the common room. As soon as they’re in though, he drags them up to the boys’ dormitory, which Hermione is a little startled that she can just walk right into. 

“I don’t know why you’re surprised,” Millicent murmurs. “The Founders were concerned that female students would be victimized, but they didn’t give a flip about preserving their virtue.” 

Hermione is a little peeved that the Founders didn’t consider that perhaps male students would also need protecting, but she just adds it to her list of gripes about Hogwarts that she’ll take up with the first authority that listens to her, placing it right after “a teacher tried to murder a first year quidditch player in the middle of a game and everyone except the meanest teacher in the school stood around and did nothing.” 

While her mind has been wandering, Daphne has been explaining what happened during the game to the boys. 

"You're telling me someone tried to murder Potter? In the middle of Quidditch?" Malfoy’s face is pinched with indignance. Hermione kind of understands. Harry Potter nearly fell off his broom, caught the Snitch by technicality, and is still somehow the big hero of Hogwarts. "And we have to care because it was a teacher?"

“It _was_ a teacher. It was definitely Quirrell.” Pansy uses her copy of _Witch Weekly_ to gesture toward Hermione. “She set his robes on fire and the jinx dropped.” Hermione feels her face grow hot, but she doesn’t miss the appraising gazes the boys are giving her. 

Vince’s forehead wrinkles. “But why would Quirrell try to kill Potter?”

Pansy, Gregory, and Zabini turn to Malfoy and he rolls his eyes. “I don’t know _every_ Death Eater. He might be one. He might not.” 

Zabini glances at Hermione, “Do you know-”

“What a Death Eater is?” Hermione bites her lip. “Follower of You-Know-Who, usually pure-blood, mostly in Azkaban?” 

Zabini nods. “Mostly, but not entirely. Draco would know them because his father was one of the biggest.” Off Draco’s glare, he amends, “ _Allegedly.”_

Draco smooths the front of his robes. “Right, allegedly.” 

Zabini breaks the tension by throwing his pillow at Draco. Hermione and Daphne retreat to Theo’s bed to escape the brief scuffle that follows. Hermione briefly worries that Theo is going to swoon, but he keeps it together, though his ears are scarlet. A glance at Daphne confirms that she has not noticed. 

“So,” Zabini continues, when the pillow war has reached a détente, “Let’s say that hypothetically, Professor Quirrell is a Death Eater and he’s trying to kill Harry Potter. I’d like to go back to Draco’s earlier question of ‘why do we care’?”

Hermione feels outrage rising in her chest. They care because a teacher shouldn’t be allowed get away with attempted murder. Isn’t that enough?

“We also can’t prove it was him.” Millicent holds her hands up in defense when everyone turns to look at her. “I’m not saying it wasn’t. I’m the one who pointed out that it probably was. But him catching fire caused a big enough commotion that Snape probably stopped whatever he was doing at the same time. Not to mention that it could have been a third person none of us could see, Snape and Quirrell were both trying to help, and Quirrell was just having a hard time because he’s useless.” 

“We do nothing.” Malfoy’s voice has taken on a timbre she hasn’t heard before. It’s steady and certain with a weight in it that he must have learned from his father. “Millicent is right. We don’t have any proof and Potter isn’t one of us.” Hermione can feel herself gearing up to argue and she reins it in. He’d included her in _us_ and he’s still talking. “We watch and we wait. If he’s up to something, he’ll slip up and then we’ll know.”

Theo asks, “Okay, then what?” 

Malfoy shrugs. “I’ll talk to Severus. Write to my father maybe or my mother. I can’t imagine she’d take the news of a professor jinxing a student’s broom very well, even if that student is Potter.” 

He spits the last word out like it tastes bad and Zabini scoffs. “Quirrell. Wouldn’t have thought that wimpy bastard had it in him.”  
  
“About that,” Hermione’s heart has started to race and she’s decidedly not thrilled to be speaking in front of her whole year, but they’re so rarely all in the same room with no professors or other students and they do seem to like her more after she’s stunned a troll and set a teacher on fire. “I think we should do some extra Defense work, like a study group.” 

Malfoy looks like he wants to argue on principle, but Daphne shoots him a warning glare. Hermione continues, “We’re not learning very much from Professor Quirrell and the material is important. Plus, if he or someone else is up to something, it can’t hurt to be prepared. They might be targeting Potter because he’s Potter, but there could easily be some other reason that would be a problem for us later.” 

She’s not going to run a study group for just the girls. It would end up being her and Millicent trying to teach their roommates the material while Tracey half-listened, Daphne fell asleep, and Pansy painted her nails or read a magazine. The boys can help, _will_ help if she can convince them to, at least Malfoy and Zabini will. 

She’s not surprised when the first person to agree to her idea for the study group is Daphne. She’s a little surprised, but not shocked, that the second person is Theo Nott. She’s floored when the third is Gregory Goyle.  
  
Malfoy and Zabini are staring at Goyle with their mouths open, but he serenely ignores them in favor of a hopeful smile at Vincent Crabbe, who caves immediately and says that he thinks extra Defense work could be very helpful since they’re “not learning anything in class and Draco can’t teach us all of it by himself.”  
  
The Draco in question seems to gather that he’s outnumbered, shuts his mouth, and pulls out a day planner that is almost, but not quite, as meticulously organized as hers. He flips through it, not exactly addressing Hermione as he weighs the relative merits of different evening study times, but not not-addressing her either, and he doesn’t flinch or snap when she offers feedback. Next to him, Pansy and Zabini are muttering furiously about Malfoy signing them up for extra work, but there’s no heat in their words.

The subject of Quirrell’s possible murderous impulses seems mostly forgotten and Hermione resolves to think on it more later, maybe taking a quick trip to the library to revisit Death Eater records if she can manage it. 

For now, she has a study group to organize.


	4. These precious things, let them break their hold on me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been a minute! Thanks for being so patient with me. I was finishing a Master's degree while working full time. I've really missed sleep. Fortunately, I'm done and I didn't flunk grad school, so wins all around. We're 1-2 chapters out from the end of Year 1 and I have a good amount written of the end of the year already so updates should be regular again.
> 
> One other note! I did post a [small bonus fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25808188) in a series I'm calling Little Aftershocks. It'll be alternate POVs, missing scenes, and that sort of thing. This one is the kids getting sorted! 
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you have fun!

Hermione initially doesn’t have much time to think about the study group because Pansy’s birthday is the following week and Daphne wants to go in on a present together. Apparently, by ‘go-in-on-a-present,’ Daphne means that she’s already bought something and wants Hermione to do some tricky charms on it. Honestly, Hermione feels a bit as if it’s her own birthday again and tells Daphne over and again that she can stop apologizing. 

Then she realizes she accidentally stayed up all night working on the charms and is actually going to be late for Potions. Daphne shoves some bacon and toast wrapped in a napkin towards her as they job down the hallway and she apologizes again. 

They’ve been working on a bracelet charmed to alter itself to match whatever outfit Pansy is wearing. It’s a delicate linked chain of goblin silver attached to a flower encircled in a ring of diamonds with one diamond at its center. The bracelet is absolutely beautiful as it is, but for someone as fashion conscious as Pansy having it shift itself to perfectly compliment her outfit or makeup is a nice touch. 

Hermione has managed to embed charms that will yield white and yellow gold for the metal and garnet, sapphire, citrine, emerald, topaz (blue and yellow), rose quartz, and amethyst for the gemstones. She’d been forced to concede defeat on rose gold after she nearly dropped lavender into her potion before stirring it (the identical looks of panic on Snape and Malfoy’s faces are burned into her memory). 

The look of pleased bewilderment on Pansy’s face when they present it to her the following night makes the sleep deprivation and embarrassment worth it. She slips it over her wrist and her dark eyes go wide when it immediately shifts into a soft yellow gold and rose quartz to match her pink pajamas. 

“You did this for me?” Her voice is quiet and she’s smiling in a way that softens the confusion in her eyes. 

Hermione shrugs, suddenly very interested in the carpet by Pansy’s feet. “It was Daphne’s idea and she picked the bracelet. I just helped with a few charms.”

“Hermione,” Millicent’s voice is firm. “This is sixth year work at least. You combined charms and transfiguration and you did it on geodes. Gemma told me that Percy Weasley in Gryffindor has been trying to transfigure aventurine into tourmaline since last year and he can’t get the energy signatures right.”   
Well, that’s just embarrassing for him more than it is an indication of Hermione’s prowess. “Really, I just-” 

“No, she’s right.” Pansy’s using her don’t-argue-with-me tone now, but she’s still smiling. “It’s amazing and I love it. Thank you, both of you.” 

She looks for a second like she might want to hug them but thinks better of it. They retire to bed soon after and Hermione dreams about fragile smiles and gemstones, but she sleeps straight through til morning and almost misses breakfast.  
  
-  
  
Pansy doesn’t know why she’s going along with the study group idea of Hermione’s, but everyone else seems fine with it and Tracey is overjoyed at the idea of extra help in Defense, so she supposes it’s for the greater good. She comes over to the boys’ dormitory early to make sure they and the room are both presentable and then lays claim to the pillows on Draco’s bed to build herself a small throne. 

Blaise settles down beside her and passes over next week’s issue of _Witch Weekly_. From across the room, Theo scoffs. “All that influence and you use it to get early copies of gossip rags.” 

Blaise glares. “I don’t know what kind of influence you think I have. I can use my last name to get small things from people who are either desperate for my mother’s attention or desperate to stay on her good side and that’s about it. _Witch Weekly_ ’s been dying to do a feature on her for ages.” 

Pansy wants to ask why Carmen Zabini doesn’t just do the feature (they’ve certainly written enough articles about her marriages either way), but Hermione and Daphne come in before she can. 

“Oh, hi Pansy!” Hermione seems a little surprised to see her, though it might just be nerves making her a little jumpy overall. Pansy takes in her perfectly unwrinkled uniform, fresh polish on her nails (in a boring but sensible peach) and the somewhat tragic bun her hair’s been pulled into and thinks oh. 

She can work with this. She throws on a smirk and says, “I came in here to make sure these clowns weren’t going to scandalize Tracey or shame their families with their slovenly ways.” Pansy can feel Blaise roll his eyes without having to look at him. “Draco, Vince, and Greg are trying to spy on Gryffindor’s practice, but they promised to be back in time.” 

Hermione looks like she doesn’t know what to do with that information, but she relaxes a fraction. “Oh, that’s fine I guess? I had assumed Draco would want to look over my outline for the study schedule.” 

“He left notes.” Theo retrieves them from the dresser drawer they appear to have been haphazardly tossed into and hands them over to Hermione who settles herself on his bed and begins to compare them against her own. 

Daphne tries to help for about half a minute before she loses the battle with herself and hops over to Draco’s bed to read Blaise’s _Witch Weekly_. Hermione, unperturbed and now looking much more comfortable, starts simply asking questions or making suggestions out loud and waiting for someone to answer them. It’s Blaise one hundred percent of the time until Millient comes in and joins Hermione on Theo’s bed. Then she starts helping and she and Blaise snipe at each other every time they disagree while Hermione takes notes on each opinion they offer. 

When Draco, Vince and Greg come in a little later, trailed by a profusely apologizing Tracey, Pansy is most of the way through her magazine and Daphne is asleep propped up against her pillow throne. 

“I’m just saying that if we’re a little ahead of the curriculum on the syllabus, maybe we can make his classes a little more bearable. I mean, we already know no one is going to learn the material _from_ him so maybe if we come in familiar, we can help him be a better teacher.” 

“Granger, I came to Hogwarts to learn from the best. If I was going to do a teacher’s job for them, I would have gone to Beauxbatons where they have an independent study track.” Blaise is still vibrating at his usual level of annoyance, so Pansy isn’t yet worried for the stability of their little group. She finds herself a bit impressed that Hermione is holding her own. Blaise loves to argue. 

At the mention of Beauxbatons, Hermione’s eyes go a little wide and Pansy can tell that she’s about to demand to know all about this independent study track. Pansy had toured Beauxbatons and had found it chilly, boring, and somehow even more pretentious than Hogwarts and she has no interest in reliving those moments through Blaise’s storytelling (besides, Draco was choosing between Durmstrang and Hogwarts so it wasn’t like Beauxbatons was really on her list). She neatly cuts in and asks, “Draco, what do you think?” 

Draco, quick on the uptake as ever, joins her on his bed, shoving Blaise over a little more roughly than strictly necessary. “I think we should pace ourselves according to aptitude. If that means we get ahead of the syllabus, then we get ahead of the syllabus.” He levels what is- for him- a very gentle glare at Hermione and says, “I’m pretty sure Quirrell is beyond help, so if you’re going to make him your pet project, don’t drag us into it.” 

Daphne nods. “He’ll only be here a year anyway, Hermione. You don’t really need to waste your time.” 

Both Tracey and Hermione’s faces grow confused and Pansy remembers just how much they’ve missed growing up with muggles. 

“What do you mean he’ll only be here a year?” This is the most attention Tracey has paid to the conversation all night. 

Daphne’s face has gone a little pale and she exchanges an uncomfortable look with Draco. Right, with parents on the Board of Governors, they’re the only ones who would know for sure whether the curse was real. It is, of course. Pansy knows it is because Draco said it is. But he knows because his father said so. 

After what looks like a telepathic round of rochambeau between Draco and Daphne, Daphne relents. “The Defense position is cursed. No one is sure who cursed it or how, but professors only last a year in the role. Some of them don’t even make it the full year before they die, like in an accident or by murder.” 

Pansy thinks she maybe could have phrased that better. Tracey looks scared now and Hermione looks scandalized. She interjects, “They don’t all die. Some just leave.” 

Draco nods. “A lot of them get fired. I’m pretty sure that’s what’s going to happen to Quirrell.” 

“He might die,” Blaise offers. “He’s been skulking around the third floor corridor.” 

The conversation devolves into speculation about what’s in the third floor corridor. Draco issues a scathing mandate that no one is to go near it after Crabbe suggests that they should maybe go and look. Pansy returns to her magazine and waits for Hermione to get control of the room again. 

Predictably, it’s Daphne who returns them to the subject of studying, though as soon as people have quieted down, she immediately hands the reins back to Hermione. Even Draco is silent, opting to raise his eyebrows at her and wait. A look of skepticism flits across her face for half a second and then it’s gone, replaced by a small, but bright smile. “Okay then. Does everyone know how to shoot up red and green sparks?”

They spend the next hour mostly going over theory since they can’t practice shooting up sparks in the dorm. Hermione promises to find them a classroom to practice in and Daphne promises to get Roska in to cover for them if they can’t find one and have to practice in the dorm. They spend another fifteen minutes arguing about Roska because he creeps out Blaise (for good reason), but Blaise backs down pretty quickly because Crabbe and Goyle like Roska, Hermione wants to meet him, Theo will support Daphne no matter what (not that she notices), and Draco wants everyone to shut up and get out so he can go to bed. 

It’s close to ten anyway and they’re starting to get tired, so people filter out pretty quickly. Pansy stays where she is, so she doesn’t miss it when Goyle quietly tells Hermione ‘thank you’ on her way out the door. She drops her voice and casts _silencio_ around Draco’s bed curtains, noting the small frown that crosses his face when he comes to sit next to her, stealing one of the pillows from her throne. “Well, that went well.” 

He doesn’t answer right away. When she nudges him, he asks, “Since when can you do silencing charms?”

Pansy frowns. “I practiced on Binny before we left for Hogwarts.” Why is he so surprised? “Obviously I don’t get it every time, but I knew I’d need it.” 

“Aren’t you tired?” There’s an odd mixture of worry and jealousy in his face. She knows how to deal with this. 

Pansy lets herself slump against the pillows. It’s not difficult, nor is it really an act. “Of course I’m tired. Hogwarts is exhausting. Classes are boring. I just attended a _study group_ for Merlin’s sake! A study group where we spent most of the time arguing anyway. I’m literally always tired.” She takes a breath. His eyes are wide. “And I can tell you all this and not worry about being called a crybaby because I put a silencing charm on your bed.” 

He makes a small hum of agreement and they sit in silence for a few moments before he says, “Yeah, I think today actually did go pretty well. Granger was...not awful. Plus she was really prepared.” Pansy waits, because there’s obviously something more he wants to say. Finally, voice barely above a whisper, he asks, “Has anyone else bothered her?” 

Oh. Pansy bites her lip. “Not that she knows of. The wards around her things were tripped a couple of times, but those are tied to Daphne and she had Roska do something to them when he came to bring those books. So, her stuff is fine and nothing has happened in a while. People talk, of course. Usually not where Daphne can hear them though, and Hermione is almost always with Daphne.” 

“Do they talk where you can hear them?” Pansy swallows, nods. Draco huffs a sigh and leans back on his one pillow, eyes drifting shut. “My dad would make a list. He’d make a list of people to keep an eye on and then he’d probably do something like find out bad things about them that they wouldn’t want people to know. Or I mean, I guess he’d have other people do that.”

That’s so much to ask. Her parents would never put that much effort into anything. She supposes this is why they’ve stayed well out of politics, simply showing up to events when they weren’t traveling, making the appropriate charitable donations, and paying the help to maintain the estate, the horse breeding, and the falconry enterprises that Pansy’s father inherited from his father’s father. 

Daphne’s mother probably has lists though. Susan’s aunt, Amelia Bones, almost certainly has lists. Vince’s and Greg’s dads are too thick to have lists, but Theo’s dad probably has lists. He’s probably on some lists too. They all are.  
Blaise’s mum probably doesn’t keep lists. She probably doesn’t need them. 

Pansy sits up, trying to work out a crick that’s formed in her neck. “I don’t think you need to go to that much effort. We’ve got the wards. They’re working. You don’t need to try to stir something up.” 

He snorts. “As if I would for her.” Pansy doesn’t answer that. She knows he’d do it for any of them. That’s the standard his godfather set. 

Plus Hermione is sort of her friend now and she and Draco technically co-lead the study group so maybe that makes them sort of friends too? Probably not quite, but maybe one day. 

He cracks his eyes open and reaches over to pull her wrist toward him without sitting up from the pillow. Pansy rolls her eyes and allows it. 

“She showed up my gift to you.” He sounds a little impressed, though Pansy’s sure he would never admit it. 

She also loves the necklace he gave her, a thin chain of diamonds arranged in a lariat with the two ends of the loop crossing over each other. It seems like something his mother would wear and in a small corner of her heart, Pansy very much hopes to grow up to be as elegant as Narcissa Malfoy. 

“She and Daphne did it together. You can ask Blaise to go in on my gift next year and show them up.”

He scoffs. “What? You want us to buy you an island?” Blaise could probably do that on his own if his mother let him get away with it. Pansy wonders if she would, if he told her he was trying to impress a girl. Then she wonders what she’d do with an island anyway.

Whatever. She can ask Binny and Dinky if she can afford an island on her own. Instead of answering Draco, she knocks over her pillow throne so that he’s buried under the fluffy avalanche. “I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up worrying. There’s no need to borrow trouble when you know it’ll find you anyway.” 

She’d overheard Parvati and Padma’s mum say something like that once and she’s been waiting for a chance to use it.   
  
-  
  
Hermione catches Neville up in the library the next night during a break from their potion review. She finds Neville retains the information better when he doesn’t have Professor Snape breathing down his neck and she’d like to see a week go by in the class without some kind of explosion or cauldron disaster. To her surprise, Blaise and Theodore join them again. She tries to think of a polite way to tell them Daphne isn’t coming when Theodore asks a question about the Herbology assignment and Neville launches into an answer. Blaise catches her eye over Neville’s bright smile and Theo’s shy one and he winks. 

When Neville and Theodore have finished parsing the issue Theo was having, Blaise apologizes and redirects the conversation to potions and Neville suddenly has three tutors instead of one. 

This continues in some fashion or another over the next few weeks. They’re all together for study group on Wednesday nights, Hermione joins Daphne (and sometimes Pansy, Millicent, and Tracey) to watch Quidditch practice on either Tuesday or Thursday nights, and she spends the other nights of the week in the library, but rarely by herself. 

There are, as far as she can tell, no more attempts on Harry Potter’s life and he mostly behaves himself in class, so she doesn’t have much cause to think of him at all until she and Millicent are up in the owlery sending letters to their parents to confirm Christmas holiday plans. They pass a few moments quietly petting the owls that allow them to and Hermione realizes that she doesn’t have any treats to offer the school owl that she’s borrowing to send her letter. 

“There must be some owl treats in here somewhere.” Hermione casts about the owlery, but finds nothing. 

As she’s resigning herself to apologising profusely to her owl and hoping it understands, she starts when a voice comes from behind them. “Oh, um, I have some.” 

They turn to see Harry Potter hovering near the doorway to the owlery. He shuffles his feet nervously, wilting somewhat under Millicent’s stare. She’s a full head taller than him, Hermione notices. No one moves and the moment grows longer and more awkward. Just as Hermione is attempting the social calculus of whether to accept or decline, Millicent gives him a small smile and says, “Brilliant. Thanks, Potter. This one was on the brink of composing a formal apology.” 

She smiles at Hermione when she says it and while she doesn’t have a lot of experience with friendly teasing, she thinks this is probably that and not anything more malicious. She smiles back, directing it at both of them and says, “Well, in lieu of a treat, an apology seemed like the least I could do. They seem to understand English after all.” 

Potter chuckles. “Yeah, I think they do. Sometimes I feel like they get people better than I do.” 

He goes to feed his owl a treat and Hermione exchanges an alarmed look with Millicent. She shrugs and schools her face into something more neutral when Potter turns around to hand them the treat bag. Hermione attaches her letter to the school owl’s leg and then allows it to gently snap up the treat from her open palm before handing the bag back to Potter. He looks down at it, then back up at her as if he’s steeling himself. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, he says, “Neville thinks you’re pretty great. I know you’ve been helping him with potions and honestly me and Ron are hopeless so it’s good that he’s got you.”

“Um, thank you?” There’s a dull roar in her ears and over Potter’s head, Millicent is making a slightly mortified face, so it’s comforting to know that this moment is exactly as surreal and awkward as it feels.

He swallows hard and says, “Listen, I know your whole house hates me and mine isn’t very nice to you either and I also know that you don’t think much of me and Ron so I guess I just wanted to say thanks for not dropping Neville because he’s hanging out with us.” 

Now she’s uncomfortable _and_ offended. “I would never!” 

He takes a step back in the face of her offense, which unfortunately means he bumps into Millicent, who looks similarly unimpressed. “Wow Potter. You really think that little of us?” 

His green eyes are huge behind his glasses and Hermione feels some of her righteous outrage subside. He had just admitted to not having great social skills and she often fears that her own are underdeveloped. Before she can say anything else, he apologises again and bolts. 

Millicent glances at her, eyebrows raised. “Did that just happen?” 

Pansy falls off her bed laughing when they tell her the story. Daphne huffs and rolls her eyes. Tracey says what they’re all thinking. “So, you’re going to have to tell Longbottom that happened, right?”

Hermione has never better understood Pansy’s need for dramatics than in this moment. She flops back on her bed and throws a hand over her face. “Do I have to?” 

Apparently not only does she have to, but the other girls have decided that they want to come, which is how Hermione finds herself walking into the library with all four of her roommates trailing after her like slightly intrusive, gossip-mongering ducklings. She’s fairly certain this is Pansy’s first time walking into the library, but she doesn’t want to ask. 

Neville is at their usual table, though he looks a little startled to go from quietly reading alone to being surrounded by the women of Slytherin. “Um, hello?” 

Millicent, because she is classy and supportive, takes out her potions book. Pansy, because she is not, props her chin up on her fist and stares at Neville and Hermione like they’re her evening entertainment. 

Which, Hermione supposes, they are. 

“Hi Neville.” Daphne gives him a bright smile before taking out a blank piece of parchment and her favorite quill for drawing. 

“Hermione needs to talk to you about something.” Pansy’s voice is a little muffled from where her hand is pressed against her chin, but Neville hears her loud and clear and his eyes get a little wide. 

“Pansy! I was getting there.” Hermione casts an apologetic look at Neville. “Sorry, Neville. This isn’t an ambush. I just needed to talk to you about something Potter said to me yesterday and apparently I can’t do that without an audience.” 

“Is everything okay, Neville?” Parvati Patil has dropped by their table and is giving all of them a general glare. The glittery barrettes in her hair soften the effect a bit, but Hermione still feels a small chill. 

To her surprise, and the surprise of most, if not all of their table, Tracey is the next one who speaks. “Parvati! What a coincidence, you and Pansy actually being in the library on the same day.” She hops up out of her seat and hauls Pansy up with her. “We need a moment of your time. Let’s go.” 

Parvati looks like she wants to argue, but Millicent heaves a long-suffering sigh and joins Tracey and Pansy - effectively boxing Parvati in- and shepherds all of them to another corner of the library. 

Daphne doesn’t look up from her drawing when she explains, “Parvati and Pansy used to be quite close. Not so much in the last few years since Pansy started getting closer to Draco, but we were all pretty good friends once upon a time. Gryffindor’s changed her a little. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but Pansy misses her, even if she would rather sing the Hogwarts anthem by herself in the middle of the Great Hall than admit it. It’ll be good for them to talk, maybe clear the air a bit.” 

She looks up then. “Sorry, do you need me to go as well? It’s just that I’m kind of hitting my stride and this table is nice and level.” 

Hermione shakes her head. “No, it’s fine.” She fiddles with the sleeves on her sweater for a moment, then forges on. “Neville, Millicent and I ran into Potter in the owlery and he took it upon himself to thank us for not ‘dropping you’ as he put it. He seems to think that we would judge you for being friends with your housemates or for being in Gryffindor. I just want to make sure you don’t feel that way as well.” 

Neville’s eyes are the widest she’s ever seen them. His mouth opens and closes a couple of times before he speaks. “Um, okay first, I’m really sorry that he did that. I certainly didn’t ask him to.”   
Daphne’s stopped drawing, though she’s still holding the quill and looking down at her paper when she says, “We didn’t think you did. But was any of it true?” 

He swallows. “I mean, no. Well, sort of? I don’t think you’re, you know, judgy. I guess I just don’t really know why you’re friends with me. You’re smart and popular and Slytherin is pretty intimidating and also kind of...separate? Slytherins don’t really mingle as much as the other houses. So, I figured you’d probably get tired of me and drift off and that would be okay. I know I’m not that fun and I’m not very bright.” 

Hermione’s heart clenches so hard that for a moment she can’t breathe. “Neville, no. That’s not-” 

Daphne’s looking at him now and she cuts Hermione off to say, “Wow. Your family did a number on you, huh?” Neville just stares at her. She sighs. “Neville, Hermione helps you with school because she likes you and she likes school, although maybe not in that order. I hang out with you because you’re nice and because you’re Hermione’s friend. Sometimes you’re even funny, when you’re not worrying so much about what we think.” 

Neville’s surprise has gone from speechless to thunderstruck. Fortunately, Hermione finds her voice. “I didn’t have any friends before Hogwarts.” She registers Daphne making a noise of disapproval and rolls her eyes. “Come on. You can’t be that surprised. Anyway-” She turns back to Neville. “You were the first friend I made here. You convinced Potter and Weasley to come after me when the troll was loose. If us being friends was causing you problems in Gryffindor, I would do something differently, but I’m not going to stop being your friend because I lose interest and I’m certainly not going to begrudge you having friends in your house.” 

“Not even if we hate them.” Hermione tries to glare at Daphne, but it wilts against her cheerful smirk. “Not that I’m saying we hate them. Although I do like Potter less and less every time he opens his mouth.” 

Neville nods, still looking faintly stunned. “Right. I’ll be sure to let him know.” 

“So...are we okay?” Hermione doesn’t understand how a simple conversation could leave her so drained, but suddenly all she wants is a hot chocolate and some biscuits. When Neville nods again and gives her a small smile, she says as much. “What if we take a break and go down to the kitchens?” 

Both Neville and Daphne perk up and begin to pack away their things. Hermione catches a glimpse of Daphne’s drawing- a half finished Golden Snitch- and gives her a thumbs up. Daphne grins. 

“Should we get Pansy and the others?” 

Daphne shakes her head. “Let them talk. Parvati is mostly bark and a little bite, but she’s probably got a lot to say. Plus, if we leave Pansy in the library, maybe she’ll pick up a book by accident.” 

Hermione doesn’t quite manage to bite back her laugh and Neville snorts, only to immediately turn bright red. 

The house elves let them sit in the kitchens and talk about Potions while they eat their biscuits and Hermione feels so lucky. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Draco POV opens the next chapter! I just liked the note Hermione's scene ended on and I took forever to get here.
> 
> Also, [this](https://www.harrywinston.com/en/winston-gates-harry-winston-platinum-diamond-bracelet#) is a visual reference for the bracelet Daphne and Hermione gave Pansy and [this](https://www.harrywinston.com/en/round-brilliant-diamond-lariat) is one for the necklace Draco gave her. These kids, they are rich.


	5. 'Cause things are gonna change so fast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY. This took forever. It was a combination of being stressed about life and being very bummed out by JKR's bad takes on Twitter. Trans women are women. Trans men are men. The HP fandom should be a safe space. If you disagree, I don't need your readership. 
> 
> Anyway, I'm back and the good news is that a lot of the following chapter is already written, so I will try to have it out in the next week or so as a thank-you to those of you who have stuck with me.

The week before Christmas hols are set to begin, Draco goes with Granger and Daphne to the library. They need to work on the study group agendas for January and the dorms are too chaotic, filled with people whose brains are clearly already on holiday. 

Daphne sits down at a table near the back, pulls out a quill and parchment, and appears to immediately tune out everything they’re saying. Granger smiles at him and says, “This is pretty much her M.O,” and though he nods when she says it, it takes him longer than he’s proud to realize that muggles must shorten _modus operandi_ into a colloquialism. He hopes it doesn’t show on his face. 

She opens her binder and starts to go through the tabs she’s marked with her ideas. It’s a good pace and she’s included a few things that weren’t on Quirrell’s syllabus but that she knows some of the purebloods know. It goes without saying that she will have already taught them to herself or else locked herself in a classroom with Daphne and practiced. Draco feels like maybe his father would want him to mock her for the extra work, but he finds he’s just relieved. She picks things up quickly and she shares her knowledge just as quickly. It’s a relief not having to carry his friends’ grades all on his own. 

He’s a little concerned that she might pick up new spells even faster than he does, but there’s no hard evidence of that yet and he’s having a good time bickering about wand form drills and essay schedules. Faintly, a voice whispers in the back of his mind that his tutor would have loved her. An even fainter voice whispers back that his _mother_ might even like her. His mother, who patiently tolerates Pansy’s fiery histrionics and coaches Daphne on how to keep her temper in check in high society political circles, would probably be very grateful for a young lady around whose most notable trait was a quick mind and steadfast work ethic. 

It’s a shame they’ll never meet. 

He banishes the thought to the back of his mind where the rest of his growing doubts about his family live and returns to the question of if they should take a week off of studying when they return from holiday. Neither he, nor Granger, particularly wants to, but their friends might need to ease back in. 

They’re combing through the shelves for a source text that was cited in their defense textbook when they're distracted by a scuffle and whispered argument on the other side of the bookshelf.

“Right, well if you’re not going to ask her, I will.” Neville Longbottom strides purposefully around to the shelf where Granger is standing. “Do you know who Nicholas Flamel is?” 

Granger’s brow furrows and she looks like she’s about to respond in the negative, so Draco cuts in. “He’s an alchemist. He created the Philosopher’s Stone, the only one in existence. What are you-” 

His eyes flick from Granger’s face, to Longbottom’s, finally landing on the tense and apprehensive Potter and Weasley over at a table and realization dawns. “Oh, you think that’s what Quirrell is trying to get out of the third floor corridor.” 

He probably should have kept that realization to himself, but it’s not like he didn’t know they were up to something and Potter skulks around more than he wants people to realize. Plus he’s tired and distracted and he gets to go home soon, so perhaps, just this once, he can be forgiven for being a little indiscreet. 

“It’s not Quirrell! It’s Snape. And keep your bloody voice down.” He wants to tell Weasley that that’s rich coming from him (the only rich thing about him) but Granger speaks before he can. 

“You’re one to talk, Weasley. I know you’ve been kicked out of the library before. And it’s not Snape. I thought so too, but he’s protecting whatever’s in the third floor corridor, and he was trying to break the jinx on Potter’s broom. I, uh, interrupted Quirrell when he was casting it.”

"If by interrupted, you mean 'set the creepy bugger's robes on fire." Daphne grins wickedly from her seat at their table, finally looking up from the cartoon unicorn she’s doodling. 

That’s too much information, but Draco doesn’t know how to tell them to shut it without looking disloyal to his house. Suspicions about a teacher are one thing. Ammunition that their worst classmates can use against them is something else entirely. That little nagging voice (which sounds a bit like Greg when it comes down to it) pipes up again. _Maybe they’re -your- worst classmates, but they went after Granger on Halloween when you didn’t._

 _Shut up,_ he tells it. He has it on good authority that Potter upset Granger just a few weeks ago with something stupid and insensitive. 

The three Gryffindors have paled slightly and Draco spares a moment to appreciate that they don’t question for even a second that Granger could set a teacher on fire.   
  
Hermione rolls her eyes. “We can’t talk about this here. Come down to the dungeons.”   
  
“You can’t be serious-” They devolve into bickering while Draco processes what he now knows. 

The Philosopher’s Stone is hidden in Hogwarts, specifically in the third floor corridor. Does his father know? It’s not as if he’d have said something to Draco. Mother would have though, an admonishment to be careful or a warning to mind Severus. 

Severus knows. Quirrell has been skulking around the third floor and he’s been skulking around Quirrell. Quirrell, who very publicly tried to kill Harry Potter and Severus who very publicly saved him. Unless they’ve really gotten this all wrong and the former Death Eater was jinxing the Boy-Who-Lived while the poor, bumbling Defense teacher tried valiantly to save him and got fire up his arse for the trouble. 

That doesn’t feel right though. Severus would never have been so obvious. He might hate Potter, but he takes his job at the school seriously. He protected him because it’s what he was supposed to do, which means he probably isn’t licking the boots of a Dark Lord that no longer exists and wouldn’t _that_ be something? 

Out loud, he says, “It’s fine, Granger. We don’t need to talk to them about this. They’re going to do whatever they’re going to do and we are going to finish our agendas.” 

She looks like she wants to argue, but holds back, giving him a sharp nod. “Right. Of course. Neville, I’ll see you later.” It’s a clear dismissal, but the Gryffindors are slow on the uptake and don’t walk away until she and Draco sit back down and start ignoring them. 

They’re debating working silencing charms into their study plan somewhere since Pansy knows them, when Daphne reaches out and taps the table to get their attention. “You know this whole Quirrell thing is going to get worse before it gets better. He’s going to do something or Potter is going to do something.” 

Draco resists the urge to put his head down on the table, but it’s a near thing. “That doesn’t mean we have to talk to them. It doesn’t mean we have to do anything.” Off Granger’s look, he amends, “I’m not saying don’t talk to Longbottom. You’ll just do it anyway. Maybe don’t tell him things his friends could use to get us detention though.” He’d almost said expelled, but that might have sent her into hysterics. Not to mention, with his father and Daphne’s mother on the Board, a Slytherin would probably have to _murder_ someone to get expelled (and even then, they’d probably need to be caught red handed). 

Daphne bites her lip. “Are you going to talk to your godfather? Or your actual father?” 

He should. That’s the thing. He should trek down to Severus’ office right now to tell him that Harry Potter and his friends are stalking Professor Quirrell and that they’ve figured out that the Philosopher's Stone is at Hogwarts and he’d maybe leave out the part where that last bit is his fault, but Severus would know anyway. He should go now and then he can spend his break not thinking about anything except practicing Quidditch moves, bragging about his grades, and maybe riding Pansy’s horses. 

That’s what he should do. 

“I don’t think so.” He gives in to the tiredness creeping into his bones and leans his elbow on the table, propping his head up on his arm. “If we’re right and they’re involved, we’ll get told off. If we’re right and they’re not involved, then we’re getting them involved. If we’re wrong, we look foolish and reckless.” 

Granger lifts her eyebrows. “We.”

Draco doesn’t answer her. 

Daphne starts packing her things away. “Maybe we just don’t do anything. Technically, it’s not our problem. Like, I know it’s an interesting problem and it’s kind of funny to think of the worst professor we have being some kind of artifact-stealing fiend out to do something nefarious like kill the Boy-Who-Lived and resurrect You-Know-Who, but it’s probably nothing like what we’re imagining.” 

She’s right. Of course she’s right. 

-

The Christmas holidays are perfectly lovely. While Hermione is disappointed that she can’t demonstrate any of the magic she’s learned for her parents, they’re immeasurably proud of her grades and delighted to hear that she’s leading a study group. She tells them all about her classes and the extra planning she’s doing and it’s only when her mother gently prompts, “And what about the other students? Can you tell us a little more about them?” that she realizes they want to know if she’s made any friends.   
  
Her mum and dad haven’t asked her if she’s made any friends for a few years now. Her answers, usually vague and dismissive or dodging the question entirely, always made them frown and hug her a little tighter. She never could bring herself to lie to them though.

And the thing is that she _can_ tell them about the other students. She knows that Pansy grew up riding horses and her parents prefer to send messages with expensive peregrine falcons bred expressly for the purpose (Hermione can’t decide if this is ostentatious or terribly interesting, but she’s leaning toward it maybe being both). She knows that Daphne is mad for Quidditch and that she has a little sister that’s a bit of a tomboy. She knows that Tracey’s mum does theater in New York, but Tracey herself would rather die than get on a stage. She knows that Millicent absolutely loves cats and has taught her kitten Loki all sorts of funny tricks.   
  
She shares all of this and her dad’s shoulders relax bit by bit. The furrow recedes from her mum’s brow. She suddenly feels a bit rotten. She’s been writing them about classes and asking questions about their practice and they’ve probably been worried sick that she was spending every day eating lunch alone in the bathroom and crying herself to sleep the way she had been at her primary school. 

So, she keeps talking. She tells them about Neville and his fearsome grandmother and her mum laughs so hard that her cheeks turn red and resolves to meet Augusta Longbottom and her vulture hat as soon as the opportunity presents itself. After a moment’s hesitation, she tells them the story about Harry Potter and Quidditch as well. Her mother has much the same reaction she’d had. 

“Well, I certainly agree that it’s improper to bend the rules for a student just because that student is famous and gifted. I’m sorry that your classmate didn’t get a chance to try out for the team.” Her mother’s eyes are warm, a light brown with flecks of honey-gold that always seem to catch the light. Hermione has always been proud to have inherited her father’s eyes, a rich, dark brown with a ring of black around the iris, but there’s something about her mum’s gaze that always makes her feel safe.

Her father, more of a pragmatist than an idealist, adds, “Probably would have been better to just discipline both of the boys and leave it at that. I can’t say I’m sorry that they didn’t bend the rules for a bully though.”

“Oh, he’s really not-” Not what? Not a bully? He kind of is, though not to her. He’s also a fellow Slytherin, she reminds herself. “He’s not so bad. His grades are about where mine are and he’s very organized. He and I run the study group together.”   
  
Her parents look a little too intrigued by this piece of information, so Hermione changes the subject to their work. One of the receptionists at the dental office is pregnant and apparently there’s some commotion surrounding the father of the baby and the woman’s sister. Her mum tries to protest that the details aren’t appropriate for eleven-year-old ears, but she makes the astute point that she’s ‘twelve actually so you can go ahead and finish the story’ and that gets a laugh out of her father. 

Overall, it’s a lovely break and it feels like it flies by, but she’s eager to get back to Hogwarts. As much as she loves her parents, she misses magic. She even misses getting caught up in dramatics and intrigue a bit. _That_ certainly never happened at her primary school. 

She tells Millicent as much when the two of them are playing with Loki in their train compartment and waiting for the other girls to find them. Millicent gives her kind of a funny, crooked smile. “It’s probably good that you don’t mind that sort of thing. I don’t think the drama and intrigue are going anywhere, not when we have Pansy and Draco around.” 

The former slams open the compartment door and flings herself onto the seat hard enough that Hermione’s surprised it doesn’t crack. Hermione freezes, but Millicent keeps petting Loki and asks without looking up, “Good break, Pansy?” 

Pansy leans her head back, eyes closed, and makes a noise that’s somewhere between a huff and a growl, which makes Loki pop his fluffy black head up and mew back. He hops out of Millicent’s lap and deposits himself into Pansy’s with no preamble. Seemingly on instinct, her hands come up to rub his ears and tangle her fingers in his long fur. 

Hermione wonders if she should do something like ask what’s wrong, but she’s saved from having to decide when Daphne and Tracey find their compartment. 

Tracey is brandishing the latest copy of _Witch Weekly_ and they manage to pass a couple of hours in relative peace bickering cheerfully about the fashion articles. Hermione notices that Pansy keeps Loki in her lap, but doesn’t do anything besides exchange a significant look with Millicent while the other girls are busy with the magazine. 

When the train arrives, Millicent makes a big show of packing Loki back into his carrier and waves the other girls ahead. Pansy evaporates into an angry girl-shaped blur as soon as the cat is off her lap and Daphne and Tracey pad after her, looking a little concerned, but still distracted by some scandalous thing Celestina Warback’s ex-husband said about her.

“So I don’t know this for sure, but I have a pretty good guess as to what was wrong with Pansy.” Millicent’s dark eyes are solemn and they stand out against her fair skin and dirty blonde hair. 

“I don’t want to gossip, but-” It’s true. Hermione has never been one for gossip, especially not about her friends, but Pansy looked so upset. 

“So Pansy’s mum and dad are pretty much never home. Their house elves run the estate. Their business manager runs the businesses. They prance around Europe spending the money that Pansy’s dad inherited. It’s anyone’s guess as to how often they remember they have a daughter or how much of a fuck they give.”  
  
Hermione feels a pit in her stomach. “So you think they didn’t come back for the holidays?”

Millicent snorts. “I’m sure they didn’t. I don’t think this is the first time either. If they were home, we’d have heard from her- ‘Oh, my parents are driving me crazy. Let me come over-’ or something like that. Since we didn’t, I think it’s a safe bet that she spent her holidays with horses and house elves for company and maybe wrote Malfoy if she felt like it.” 

Hermione is at a complete loss for what to do with this information. Pansy clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, but she’s also abjectly miserable and a miserable Pansy is worse than a nightmare. 

“Do you think we should talk to Malfoy maybe?” It’s her only idea and from the look on Millicent’s face, it isn’t a good one. 

“I think that if we want someone to barge in and make the whole situation worse, we should definitely talk to Malfoy.” Millicent shoulders Loki’s carrier and the two of them start to make their way out. “You might not have noticed, but he doesn’t communicate all that well and he gets panicky when he thinks things aren’t going his way. Handing him a problem that he can’t yell at or sic his father on is a recipe for disaster.” 

Hermione frowns, casting her mind back to the last conversation they’d had about Professor Quirrell and the Philosopher’s Stone. Malfoy had said that he wouldn’t say anything to his father or to Professor Snape. Either he’d been lying or she had effectively thrown a problem at him that certainly wouldn’t be solved with yelling and almost as certainly wouldn’t be solved by siccing his father on it.   
  
She wants to ask Millicent’s opinion, but they’re rather preoccupied with the Pansy problem, which persists through dinner and into the next morning. Pansy snaps at anyone who looks at her too long and her hand strays to her wand more than once. The boys don’t seem phased by this and when she hazards to mention it, Blaise just shrugs. “She’s always been a bit mad, that one. Let her be and she’ll either get over it or Draco will figure something out.” 

Hermione wants to believe that, but Malfoy’s mind is clearly elsewhere. He doesn’t volunteer a single answer in their first few classes and he’s got dark circles under his eyes like he’s not sleeping enough. Maybe he had an awful Christmas too, she reflects. Then again, it isn’t any more her business than Pansy’s holiday and she doesn’t think she can get away with asking any of the boys about him, even if she did want to pursue that line of (well-intentioned) gossip.   
  
In the end, it’s Daphne who pulls Pansy out of her funk and she does it by coming down with the nastiest flu any of them has ever seen. She tries to fake it, getting out of bed and getting ready for the day, but she wobbles so badly that it looks like she’s going to faint right there and Pansy ends up half-dragging, half-carrying her to the hospital wing. 

She returns with her lips tight and informs them that Pomfrey is keeping Daphne over the weekend and if any of them have similar symptoms they’re to report to her immediately. She sinks down onto her bed and only then seems to notice the concerned faces of her roommates, mostly Tracey and Hermione herself. 

“I don’t think you need to worry.” There’s something quietly resigned in her voice. “She’s sick a lot. It’s probably not due to all the pure-blood inbreeding, but she’ll laugh if you make a joke about it.” 

Millicent, lying on her own bed, calls over, “She’ll laugh, but her sister will punch you.” 

Hermione hears the opening and takes a risk. “Ah, right. Because she’s got fits of rage and madness due to the inbreeding?” When all four of her roommates laugh at her joke, something in her soars. “What’s Astoria like?” 

Millicent snorts. “Absolutely mad. More energy than a toddler, just a quidditch-mad as Daphne, and as hot of a temper but with none of her tact.”   
  
Pansy smiles, her eyes fixed on a point somewhere near the ceiling. “She broke one of Draco’s toes once after he made Daphne cry when we were nine and she was seven. Roska was the one who fixed it actually and he had some scathing commentary for all of us. Kept the secret though, but that’s part of why Draco’s so skittish around him.” She chuckles quietly, then grows serious. “I wonder if anyone’s told him Daphne’s sick again.” 

Millicent pitches her voice low like she’s trying to be soothing. “I’m sure he knows. It’s just the flu anyway and Pomfrey knows what she’s doing.”   
  
“I thought wizards didn’t get sick very often?” Actually, if pressed, Hermione would admit that she doesn’t know where she got that idea, but she feels certain she’s read it somewhere. 

To her surprise, it's Tracey who answers her. “We get sick almost as often as muggles, but when we’re younger, our natural magic fights off most illnesses for us. Once we’re older and exerting control over our magic, some of that protection dissipates and we’re expected to just take better care of ourselves.”   
  
Millicent adds, “If your immune system is shit, there’s not a whole lot that can be done even with magic. It’s mostly down to rest, time, and proper care.” 

Hermione digests this information and resolves to keep a better eye on Daphne. 

-

It takes Daphne a few weeks to bounce back. Hermione takes notes for her while Pansy and Draco trade off going to the kitchens for hot tea and sweets to sneak into the Hospital Wing and the dorms once she’s well enough to go back. Pansy suspects that Snape knows what they’re doing, but since he doesn’t say anything, she takes that as tacit approval. Even if he doesn’t approve, they’re the two Slytherins least likely to ever receive a detention from him. 

In true Daphne fashion, once she’s better, she starts going to Quidditch practices before she starts going to class again. Pansy is a little surprised that Hermione lets her get away with it, but Daphne has dragged herself to study group a couple of times even while sick, and it looks like she’s actually reviewing the notes Hermione has been bringing her. Still, they all breathe something of a collective sigh of relief when she rolls out of bed one Monday morning in early spring and trots down to breakfast with the rest of them. 

They slip into a version of their pre-holiday routine. Hermione in the library most nights, joined sometimes by Daphne and Draco, and almost always by Neville Longbottom. Scoping out Slytherin quidditch practice at least once a week; Pansy bonds with Blaise over a mutual admiration of Cassius Warrington’s arms. Study Group on Wednesdays.

Pansy will admit, under pain of death, that she actually enjoys Study Group. She misses a lot in class, mostly because she’s never paying attention, and reviewing the material with Draco and Hermione isn’t nearly as boring. They’re remarkably patient with Crabbe and Goyle, playfully snappish with Blaise, and so quick with each other that sometimes it’s like they’re one (slightly terrifying) person. 

When they’re not reviewing material, they’re concocting and dismantling elaborate conspiracy theories about Professor Quirrell and the Philosopher’s Stone. Sometimes Professor Snape has the dubious honor of featuring in the theories as well, though Draco defends him with a rabid fervor. Pansy knows that Neville sometimes tells Hermione what Potter and Weasley have figured out, but she generally keeps it close to her chest, though one night when they’re back in the girls’ dorm, she admits that Snape isn’t looking good in the narrative the Gryffindors have put together. 

Pansy doesn’t know what to do with that information. Obviously Snape is _smarter_ than Quirrell; he’s the more accomplished wizard; he’s the one with Death Eater credentials; and he’s a _Potions Master_ , which kind of seems relevant if you’re going to be making the Elixir of Life. The thing is, Pansy likes Professor Snape. She doesn’t share Draco’s unshakeable faith in him, but she still doesn’t think he’d hurt a student, even one he loathes as much as Potter.

It comes to a head the week after Easter break, which Pansy and Draco both elect to spend at Hogwarts. The world’s most obnoxious Gryffindors have also stayed and Draco spends an inordinate amount of time stalking them and then pretending that he’s not stalking them. Pansy contemplates owling Hermione in despair, but discards the idea because there’s nothing Hermione will be able to do. Pansy has been the designated Draco-wrangler in their friend group since they were five and it’s not going to change. 

She thinks she does an admirable job of it, all things considered, and Tracey even joins her on a few Draco-distracting missions since she’d stayed over the break as well. By the time their roommates get back and they can update them, it feels like Draco has mostly gotten it out of his system and he’s ready to jump back into Study Group organization, exam review (gross), and plotting his Quidditch training strategy for the summer. They even manage to go a whole week without mentioning Snape and Quirrell outside of homework conversation and without talking about the Philosopher's Stone at all. 

It’s a rather big disappointment when she wakes up on a Monday morning to find that Draco managed to lose 50 points for Slytherin and be assigned a detention with Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, and poor, hapless Neville Longbottom. She doesn’t even get the story from him, as he’s too furious to tell it properly. Something about hypocrites, sneaky Gryffindors, and...dragon smuggling? She makes Blaise explain it to her on the way to Potions and she’s glad she made the effort, because having a little context for the cold fury emanating from Professor Snape all morning makes it slightly easier to bear. 

Through some silent agreement, she and the other Slytherins shift positions so that Hermione is partnered with Draco for the duration of the class, though whether it’s in the hope that their combined perfection will blunt the sharp edges of Snape’s anger or in the hope that Hermione will be able to counterbalance Draco’s distraction, Pansy couldn’t say. Whatever the plan was, it seems to work. They get through class with minimal vitriol (though Neville Longbottom has a difficult time of it) and bid a hasty retreat to the boys’ dorm where Draco promptly flings himself onto his bed and yanks the curtains closed. Pansy, undeterred, yanks them back open, ignoring Millicent and Hermione’s protests about privacy and Tracey and Daphne’s poorly muffled giggles.

“It’s going to be fine.” She injects a confidence into her voice that the two of them will both know is fake, but what matters is that _only_ the two of them will know that. Draco must agree because he nods slowly and schools his expression into something more neutral than abject misery.

In the end, he doesn’t have that much time to wallow. It’s a busy week with classes, Study Group, extra exam review, and just enough time left over for far-fetched conspiracy theories. The other professors seem content to categorically ignore Draco unless he’s contributing to the class and Pansy suspects that this is because everyone’s favorite golden child and his two best friends lost 150 points for Gryffindor while Draco only lost 50. Slytherin is trailing Ravenclaw for the lead, but not by much. Draco receives a half-hearted lecture from one of the prefects, but since he has the ironclad excuse of trying to get Potter in trouble (and succeeding), he’s mostly still in their good graces. 

Pansy supposes she’s grateful that the Draco situation doesn’t require every last bit of her attention because Hermione is slowly losing her mind over exams and Daphne has developed some kind of lingering cough that she refuses to see Pomfrey about until she actually collapses and Blaise carries her to the Hospital Wing with Theo and the girls hovering close behind. It’s all she, Tracey, and Millicent can do to maintain some semblance of normalcy and even that goes out the window when they find out on Saturday night that Draco is going to be expected to serve detention with Hagrid in the Forbidden Forest. 

Pansy paces until she’s sure she’s worn a path into the floor. Millicent throws her out when she starts throwing things and she goes to the boys’ dorm and throws things there instead. They’re too scared of her to stop her and she doesn’t break anything Blaise or Hermione can’t fix. After what feels like hours, but probably isn’t, she runs out of energy and collapses on Draco’s bed. Vince ambles over and pats her hand awkwardly. “He’ll be okay. He’s Draco.”  
  
He’s wrong.

Draco comes back from his detention pale and shaken, a thin sheen of sweat streaking his face. Pansy shakes off her sleepy haze and goes to hug him, but he pulls away shaking his head. “I need to talk to you.” He looks over his shoulder to where Blaise, Theo, Vince, and Greg are hovering. “Just Pansy. Sorry guys.” 

Vince and Greg just shrug and head out to the common room while Blaise rolls his eyes and goes back to talking to Theo. Theo, saint that he is, puts his hand in between Blaise’s shoulder blades and guides him out as well. Draco draws a shaking breath and stands in the middle of the room staring at nothing until she pulls him down to sit on his bed. “Draco, what’s wrong? What did they do to you?” 

He buries his face in his hands and shakes his head again. “I don’t know...I don’t know how to…”

She wraps her arm around his shoulder, pulling him into the kind of side hug he used to give her when she’d cry over her parents missing a holiday or remembering her birthday a few days late. “Shh. Hey. I’m here. I’ve got you. Let me help.” 

She draws the story out of him in fits and starts. Something had been hurting unicorns and he and Potter had been tasked with going to find one of them so Hagrid could try to save it. They’d found the unicorn, but- 

“I saw him, Pans. The Dark Lord is alive, or at least he’s _something._ ” Her stomach roils and she bites her lip to fight down a shiver. This isn’t about her. This is about Draco. “If the Dark Lord is alive then that means that he’s coming for Potter and for the Philosopher's Stone and my father will have to-” 

“Maybe he won’t though. Maybe he doesn’t know.” Stupid. Of course Draco’s father knows. Draco’s father knows everything. 

Pansy doesn’t want to think about what that might mean. 

“We have to tell the others. I don’t know what I’m going to say. I don’t know how-” Pansy pets his hair and shushes him again. She knows what he’s trying to say. They’ve spent the whole year telling Granger she’s safe in Slytherin because there’s no more Dark Lord and no more Death Eaters and they’ve been proven wrong at every turn. It’s not like she’s going to _drop_ this Philosopher’s Stone thing any more than fucking Potter is going to. 

“I’ll talk to Daphne, okay? She’ll know what to do. Can you just get some rest? We can figure out more in the morning.” He nods reluctantly, face crumpled in misery. There’s a tiny, traitorous part of her heart that’s grateful he still lets her see him like this. 

By the time she lets the other boys into their dorm, the curtains around his bed are closed. She returns to her own and promptly throws herself face down on the bed. 

“Um, Pansy?” Tracey begins. 

Pansy waves her off without looking up. “Tomorrow.” Tomorrow Daphne should be out of the hospital wing. Tomorrow they will figure out how to tell Hermione what Draco saw. 

Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Tomorrow.


	6. And if I die today

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience, everyone! There was more work than I anticipated to make this chapter what I wanted it to be (I hope it's worth it!). Hoping to get back to a regular update schedule ASAP!

Hermione wakes on Sunday morning to a hushed argument taking place across the room. The curtains on Pansy’s bed are drawn and none of her roommates are anywhere in sight. 

“Hello?” She calls. 

The whispers from Pansy’s bed go silent for a moment, then Millicent’s voice comes at a normal volume. “I told you we were going to wake her up.” 

There’s a snarl that sounds like it might be Pansy trying to shush her, but before it can morph into any actual words, Tracey’s voice follows at the same volume. “I don’t think we can wait for Daphne, Pansy.” 

Another snarl, then the curtains are drawn back to reveal Pansy’s surly glare. Millicent and Tracey are with her and looking like they're trying to position their bodies as far away from Pansy as they can get while still being on the bed. Given that Pansy's eyes are bloodshot and one of her hands is clenched in a fist, that seems like a safe choice. 

Hermione steels herself and asks, "Is it Malfoy? Did something happen at detention?" 

That's either the right question or the wrong one to ask because Pansy's face spasms and she abruptly sags under the weight of her own tension. Millicent, brave soul, reaches over and rubs her shoulder gently. Tracey frowns and pulls her knees up to her chest. “You’d better come over here, Hermione.” 

And that’s a little confusing because the room is spacious but it’s not so big that they can’t have a perfectly normal conversation on their respective beds. Millicent, noting her hesitation, murmurs to Pansy, “Do you want to do this in the boys’ dorm?” 

Pansy shakes her head, dark curls messy like she hasn’t brushed her hair since she woke up. Maybe like she didn’t even go to sleep. “I told Draco I would handle this so I’m handling it.” She bites her lip, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “But we could go to the Hospital Wing. I don’t want to do this without Daphne.”   
  
_Do what_ , Hermione wants to shout. She’s never seen Pansy distressed enough to neglect her meticulous grooming. She’s not even sure she’s ever seen Pansy neglect her beauty sleep, but there are dark circles under her eyes and the eyes themselves are a little bloodshot. She looks exhausted. More than that, though, she looks angry. Not Pansy’s usual level of “I’m going to break things and buy a horse about it” anger, but something vicious and scared, like an animal caught in a trap. 

Abruptly, Hermione realizes that if there’s something the girls have to tell her and they’re this tense and apprehensive, it’s probably to do with her being muggleborn. If Pansy told Malfoy she’s “handling” something, then it might even have to do with his notorious, muggle-hating father. Maybe it’s the study group?  
  
Out loud, she says, “I’d like to visit Daphne. Maybe we can pick up some hot chocolate and sweets on the way.”

A little bit of the tension seeps out of Pansy’s shoulders. “That actually sounds excellent. Leave in 15?” She leaves the bed to stand in front of her mirror and grimaces when she sees her hair. Hermione is actually skeptical that Pansy will actually be able to finish her usual beauty routine in fifteen minutes, but she gets up and starts to get dressed anyway.   
  
They’re not _exactly_ quiet when they make their way into the Hospital Wing roughly a half hour later, but it’s late enough in the morning that Daphne is awake (or she does an admirable job of pretending they didn’t wake her up). She has dark circles under her eyes and her normally sleek hair is limp and a little tangled. Hermione doesn’t comment, but she exchanges a cautious glance with Tracey and Millicent. 

Pansy ignores both them and all boundaries of propriety and climbs into Daphne’s bed with the hot chocolate and scones they’d procured on the way. Because her patience is infinite, Daphne giggles and takes a scone instead of kicking Pansy out. Her usually musical giggle is rough and sounds like it hurts a little bit, but her eyes are sparkling and when her chest tightens, Hermione realizes how much she’s missed that.

They pull chairs up to the bed and spend a few minutes catching up on gossip while Daphne nibbles on her scone. Pansy is restless and keeps jostling Daphne as she tries to get comfortable. Finally, Daphne sets her half eaten scone to the side and says, “Pansy, if you don’t tell me what bug is up your arse, I am going to throw you and your hot chocolate off the bed. Don’t think I can’t just because I look like death warmed over.”

She doesn’t quite look _that_ bad, but it’s close. 

Hermione doesn’t miss how still Tracey and Millicent grow when Pansy takes a breath to speak. Tracey reaches out as if she’s going to put a hand on Hermione’s knee and then pulls back like she’d thought better of it. On the bed, Pansy is clutching her hot chocolate like a lifeline and Daphne’s eyes are trained on her face.   
  
“Draco thinks he saw something in the forest.” Okay, well that could be worse. There are loads of creatures in the Forbidden Forest. That’s why it’s forbidden. So Malfoy saw something that frightened him and now Pansy’s upset. That seems par for the course, but it doesn’t explain Millicent and Tracey’s odd behavior. 

Pansy keeps going. “They were supposed to be looking for an injured unicorn. Something’s been killing them. Hagrid took Weasley and Longbottom to go in one direction and sent Draco and Potter off with his dog.”  
  
“Pairing up Draco and Potter was his first mistake,” Daphne mutters. Pansy ignores her.   
  
“They found the injured unicorn, but before they could do anything, they saw someone in a cloak come out of the woods and start drinking its blood. Draco ran. I guess maybe Potter ran too? He didn’t say.” Pansy swallows, dropping her eyes to the cup still clutched in her hands. “Draco’s pretty sure it was the Dark Lord.” 

In the aftermath of Pansy’s revelation, what surprises Hermione most is how she’s not at all surprised. She goes to school for _magic;_ she’s learning to be a _witch_ and she has the highest grades in her year; she has _friends_ , the kind that eat lunch with her, drag her to Quidditch games, and come to study group even when they’d rather do anything but study. If she thinks about it, she’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop for months. That it comes in the form of a resurrected dark wizard who would happily murder her and her entire family? Seems like semantics at this point.   
  
Slowly, she realizes that everyone is staring at her and she feels her face get warm. Pansy is leaning up against Daphne as if the past few minutes have drained her of her remaining energy and Daphne has one hand resting gently on Pansy’s arm while her other one is gripping the blanket tight enough that her knuckles are white. “Hermione?” 

_What do you want me to say,_ Hermione wonders. _I’m twelve. I have seven exams to take next month. Those exams determine whether or not I get to stay in magic school. Said magic school is currently housing a powerful artifact that one of our professors might be trying to steal. That professor may or may not be working for a “Dark Lord” that was supposed to be dead, but is running around drinking unicorn blood and probably plotting to murder one of my classmates either before or after he literally achieves immortality._ _  
_ _  
_ _When he takes over the world, fucking Fletcher Avery will probably get promoted out of the Ministry mailroom._ Her friends’ faces melting from concern into confusion is her first clue that she’d said the last bit out loud.   
  
Millicent wraps a strong arm around her shoulders. “Don’t be daft,” she murmurs. “Avery will never make it out of the mailroom, Dark Lord or no Dark Lord.” At this, Pansy giggles and if she has to swipe at her eyes a few times, they all politely ignore it. 

“Do the boys know?” Daphne has picked up her scone again, but it looks like she mostly just wanted something to pull apart. She hands one of the bigger pieces to Pansy, who dunks it in the dregs of her hot chocolate and nibbles on it before answering. 

“I think I’m probably going to have to tell them. Draco was- well, he was pretty shaken up and I don’t think the others are going to be much better.” That’s right. Their families were all Death Eaters, except for _maybe_ Blaise's. Hermione reflects that she should probably be feeling something more dire than ‘awkward’ about this fact, but maybe the time for big feelings isn’t now.   
  
Out loud, she asks, “You said Potter was with Malfoy? Does that mean he knows too?” She knows it won’t win her any points asking, but it seems pertinent given that the wizard in question killed Potter’s parents and tried to kill him when he was one. 

“Fuck if I know,” Pansy mutters before shoving the rest of Daphne’s scone into her mouth. Daphne pets her hair and gives Hermione a weak smile. 

“It’s worth asking. We already thought something was up with him anyway. Maybe you can catch Longbottom sometime today. Were you going to study with him today?” 

Hermione has been carving blocks into her already packed schedule to review with Neville separately from the others. He’s still skittish around large groups of Slytherins and more often than not, Malfoy or at least one of the other boys is studying with them. She’ll give Malfoy the barest minimum of credit; while he still laughs whenever something goes wrong for Neville in class, he doesn’t mock him to his face anymore and if he’s doing it behind his back, it isn’t happening in front of Hermione. 

“The plan was to meet up and decide at dinner. He was afraid he might be too tired from detention.” After hearing how it had gone, she wouldn’t be surprised if he was reluctant to leave the Gryffindor common room for a while. “I guess it might make sense to try and track him down before then. Maybe he’ll be at breakfast.”  
  
“You should go.” Daphne cuts off their protests before they can start. “Pomfrey will be here soon. I’m supposed to be able to go back to the dorms today, so I can meet you there later. Try to get something out of Longbottom and then we can all talk to Greg, Vince, and Theo together.” 

Hermione exchanges a quick look with Tracey and Millicent, wondering if they’ve surmised as she did that Theodore will likely take bad news a little better if it’s coming from Daphne. On the bed, Pansy appears to be dozing and grumbles when Daphne nudges her, but between the three of them, they manage to coax her off the bed with the promise of real breakfast.  
  
-

Pansy’s head is pounding and getting up feels like the hardest thing she’s ever done. Daphne’s bed was warm and comfortable and it had Daphne in it, which means she would have been safe and looked after for a little while and all these problems could be someone else’s. That wouldn’t have been fair to Daphne and she doubts Millicent would have let her get away with it, but she’s so _tired._ She can’t remember if she slept at all the night before and she’s deeply reluctant to go into the Great Hall without finding a mirror and making sure she looks like a person. 

She doesn’t quite manage to put up a fight when her roommates gently march her to breakfast though, and after Tracey presents her with a plate that’s loaded with her favorites, she’s feeling a little more like herself. This early, it isn’t surprising that Vince and Greg aren’t up at breakfast with them, but her heart sinks a bit when she notices that neither is Draco. Blaise and Theo are further down the table having a heated discussion about one of the goblin rebellions they’re supposed to know for History, but Blaise keeps shooting her looks over his eggs and toast.

She’s halfway through her bowl of mixed berries when it hits her. “Fuck.” Pansy slumps sideways and rests her forehead on Millicent’s shoulder. “Draco’s fucking birthday is next week.” 

Millicent pats her head, the angle a little awkward since the hand closest to Pansy is holding a fork with a sausage speared on it. “All things considered, I don’t think he’s really thinking about it right now.” 

“That isn’t- That’s not my- I was making plans.” Hermione had given her a notebook and shown her how to do a weighted pro and con list, gone over the best ways to organize a schedule, and helped her make a chart. Draco’s first year hadn’t been the easiest and Pansy was going to make sure that his twelfth birthday was fucking flawless. 

Unbidden, something she once overheard Carmen Zabini say to her mother over drinks pops into her head. _“If you want to make the gods laugh, darling, tell them your plans.”_

Pansy stares across the room to where Hermione has drawn Longbottom away from the Gryffindor table, their heads bent together as if to telegraph to anyone watching how dire it is that they hide their secret, and sincerely hopes the gods are yucking it up.

When she stands to go, Blaise and Theo hasten to join her, Theo shoving half of a poorly constructed breakfast sandwich into his mouth as he does. Millicent and Tracey follow at a more sedate pace. No one seems surprised when, instead of leading them back to the boys’ dorm, she leads them outside. It’s a gray, wet day and not many people are out. Pansy regrets not waiting for Hermione and her masterful warming charms, but she’s not left with much time to regret before the sound of two people trying their best to run in a combination of sleet and snow halts their progress. 

“Longbottom’s going to break his damn ankle,” Millicent mutters as he and Hermione come pelting into view. They skid to a halt when they reach the others and Longbottom narrowly manages to stay on his feet, though he has to windmill his arms a little bit and Hermione seems braced to catch him if he falls. 

Once they’ve caught their breath, Hermione glares at Pansy. “You might have told me we were leaving.” 

Pansy had been trying to do her a favor, but she doesn’t think that comes across the right way when she says, “You don’t need to be here for this part. Neither does he.” 

Hermione rolls her eyes and Pansy wonders whether she picked that up from Daphne or herself. It doesn’t seem to be the kind of habit she’d have developed on her own. 

“Really, Pansy? You don’t think that Neville might have some helpful information to offer, what with him having been out last night in the forest? What with him being one of Potter’s best friends?” 

Pansy notices that Longbottom’s ears turn pink when Hermione says that last bit and she files it away for future reference. “Fine. He can stay. Let’s go.”   
  
They pick a secluded spot down by the lake, the sort of spot where the older couples go to be alone sometimes. It’s too cold for that today, so they’re pretty confident they’re alone, but Pansy casts a silencing spell anyway while Hermione is doling out warming charms. 

Blaise and Theo stay quiet when Pansy repeats her story for the third time in twelve hours. Their faces are grim, but less surprised than she would have expected. Neither of them blink when Longbottom confirms that what Potter and Draco saw was indeed the Dark Lord. Apparently, as if the story wasn’t ridiculous enough, a centaur had told Potter so after carrying him out of the forest. Centaurs are cryptic, but they never lie. 

“To be honest,” Theo says, his voice soft, but steady, “I was always kind of expecting this. My dad never believed he was really dead. I don’t think Crabbe or Goyle do either.” 

Millicent adds, “My aunt and uncle don’t either. My mum and dad think he’s dead. Well, I guess they _thought_ he was dead.”   
  
Blaise stares out at the lake with a blank expression. “Do you think we were dumb to believe that a baby could kill a dark wizard? Do you think everyone was?” 

No one answers him. No one likes the answer.   
  
In a flash of his always-surprising Gryffindor courage, Longbottom is the next to speak. “Harry still thinks it’s Snape who’s after the Stone. I know you all don’t, but it just seems more likely than, well, you know.” He shrugs like he’s not any happier with the accusation than they are.

Pansy’s headache, never having really gone away, grows steadily worse until she feels like she can hear her own blood moving through her veins. She gives in to the demanding reverberations inside her skull, buries her face in her hands, and screams. She thinks she hears Longbottom making some kind of distressed noise, but she can’t bring herself to care. 

When she’s finally worn her lungs out, Hermione leads them back to Slytherin, making the astute point that they probably don’t have long before someone investigates the noise Pansy was making, probably Hagrid coming to check if there’s a wounded animal.   
  
Longbottom leaves them at the castle with a promise to keep them updated and against her better judgement and common sense, Pansy finds herself feeling grateful toward him. The Gryffindors are trying to put together a compelling narrative for Dumbledore, but the Slytherins are staying as far away from it as they can get. If the Dark Lord is back, their focus has to be on their families and each other. Pansy has a feeling life is about to get a whole lot harder for most of them. 

Life has _already_ gotten harder for Draco, who meets them at the door to the boys’ dorm with bags under his eyes that look like they could hold the weight she knows is sitting on his heart. “I told Greg and Vince. They wanted to know why I didn’t go to breakfast.” 

He lets them into the room and she sees Greg and Vince sitting morosely on Vince’s bed. They straighten up when Hermione walks in and she can see them both struggling to think of what to say to her. Finally, Vince settles on, “Hi, Hermione.” Greg nods. 

Hermione gives them a small wave and then joins Tracey on Theo’s bed. Draco sits back down on his own and she and Blaise join him while Millicent claims Blaise’s. Daphne’s absence in the room is loud and it makes the tension buzzing around them feel worse. Pansy squeezes Draco’s hand and gives herself a moment to just hate everything. 

Blaise sighs and breaks the uncomfortable silence. “Draco, we’ve heard from Pansy, but maybe it would be helpful if you could tell us what you saw. Just so we can be sure that it was what you think it was.” 

Pansy only reins in the punch she so badly wants to throw because she’d have to reach across Draco to do it. She settles for glaring at Blaise and saying, “It’s okay, Draco. You don’t have to.” 

He heaves a shaky breath and it sounds so wrong coming from him. He’s not supposed to sound shaken and drained. He’s not supposed to sound scared. She hates everything. 

Draco shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I saw a monster in a hooded cloak bent over and drinking the blood of a unicorn. If it wasn’t the Dark Lord, we’re still in trouble.” 

“It was.” Hermione’s voice is quiet, but steady. Pansy wonders how she does it. “One of the centaurs told Potter. He and Weasley and Neville are going to tell Dumbledore.” 

Draco folds further into himself and Pansy leans against him. After a second, Blaise copies her, leaning against Draco’s other side. 

Theo chews on his lower lip for a moment, then asks, “If they’re going to talk to Dumbledore, maybe we don’t need to do anything?”  
  
Tracey, hugging one of his pillows to her chest, says, “I don’t really know what we can do.” She takes a breath as if centering herself and continues, “You lot can’t write your parents, right? Because if we’re right, it means trouble, and if we’re wrong, it means trouble.” 

Millicent picks up the thread. “And you, Blaise, and Hermione can’t write yours either, for pretty much the same reason.” 

“I maybe could,” Blaise offers. “But I don’t know how much good it will do. It’s not like the Dark Lord would just up and marry my mother.”   
  
When he gets a startled look from both Tracey and Hermione, Pansy is forcefully reminded of yet another thing they forgot to tell their half-blood and mud- muggleborn roommates. She nods to them and says, “I’ll explain that later. But you’re right. Nothing good will come from raising alarm bells that will pull attention to us. We’ll let Potter and his crew take the heat, Dumbledore will deal with the Stone and the Dark Lord or forest monster or whatever, and we will…” She has to brace herself before she says the next part, yet another reason for her to hate everything. “We will focus on preparing for our exams.” 

Hermione brightens at that and Draco relaxes a little. No one else looks particularly happy about exams and the speed at which they’re coming up, but the tension in the room has lessened. 

It dissipates entirely a few minutes later when a pale, but smiling Daphne throws open the door and asks, “Is this a private party or can anyone join?” 

-

Exam week is as exhilarating as it is exhausting. Hermione spends every waking moment buried in her notes or helping her roommates review. She barely has time to think about stones that hold the secret to immortality, incompetant teachers with huge secrets, or the homicidal supervillain whose rumors of death may have been greatly exaggerated. 

She hears from Neville that Harry Potter is thinking of all three of those things a great deal and she supposes that’s fair. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did try to murder him as an infant. Still, it might behoove him to spend a little more time reviewing his potions notes, assuming he took any. She says as much to Pansy, since Pansy is usually up for trash talking Gryffindors (or rather, Pansy is usually instigating and actively participating in the trash talking of Gryffindors), but Pansy looks at her like she’s grown a second head and says, “Hermione, you and Draco are the only swots with half legible notes from Potions.” 

“Vince tries.” He really does, bless his heart. Still, when she says that, Pansy just gives her a look and they get back to Transfiguration review. 

She supposes she has to be grateful that it’s the last day of exams when Neville comes pelting down the hallway leading to the dungeons and nearly collides with her and Daphne on their way back from decompressing in the kitchens after their last exam. His eyes are wild and his hair is sticking up at every angle. “Third floor,” he manages to gasp out. “Now. Harry’s going to- he’s going.” 

She takes his meaning and her hands go cold. “Daphne, tell the others where I’m going.”   
  
Daphne grabs her hand hard enough to hurt. “I will, but you have to wait. Kneecap Potter if you have to. Don’t go without us.” 

There’s an argument to be had there, but not right now. Daphne drops her arm and in the next second, she and Neville are running through the hallways, dark and quiet this close to curfew. She hears Potter and Weasley before she sees them. They’re arguing in an alcove just off the third floor corridor and neither of them spot Hermione and Neville when they arrive.

“Harry, you might not be any happier about Granger than I am, but we have to wait for Neville to get back. Besides, Granger’s smart and she’s muggleborn. She can probably help.” 

“I know she’s smart! That’s not the point. We have to go. Snape could be here any minute. For all we know, he’s already in there.” 

“Well, we’re not going without Neville.” Neville flushes and she can’t tell if he’s pleased or embarrassed, but she doesn’t have time to think about it.

“Potter.” She’s out of breath and her heart feels like it’s about to beat all the way out of her chest, but she will be damned if she lets them go haring off without anything resembling a plan. “Do you even know what you’re going to do?” 

He glares at her, green eyes almost black in the low light. “I’m going to go get the Philosopher’s Stone before Snape can or I’m going to take it away from him.”   
  
There’s no tactful way for her to put this. “Potter, you’re eleven.” Weasley’s face spasms and she thinks he might be trying not to laugh, but before she can find out, the cavalry arrives in the form of all four of her roommates, plus Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle. 

Now Weasley isn’t laughing. “Bloody hell, bring all of Slytherin down on us, why don’t you?”

“Shut up, Weasley.” Hermione is surprised that of all people, the response comes from Tracey.

Millicent backs her. “If you’re accusing our Head of House, this concerns us.”   
  
Potter and Weasley look like they almost might concede that point, until Malfoy follows it up with, “And if you’re wrong and it’s Quirrell that’s after the stone, then you’re not stealing Slytherin’s glory. We’re the ones who clocked him.” 

Potter’s face darkens, but before he can snarl something at Malfoy and escalate things into a fight, she interjects. “We’re wasting time. If you’re convinced tonight is the night someone’s going after the stone, then let’s get on with stopping them.” 

Neville casts a dubious glance at the Slytherin contingent. “There’s kind of a lot of people here.” And the Gryffindors are sorely outnumbered.   
  
Hermione bites her lip. He’s not wrong, but she doesn’t know what to say. Pansy beats her there. “Daphne’s not going.” Daphne scowls, but Pansy forges on. “No, you literally just got out of the hospital wing. Blaise is back at the dorm writing his mother in case this all goes sideways. Go keep him company.” 

Malfoy drops his voice and adds, “Maybe be ready to write yours too, just in case.” Daphne huffs, but agrees, and Malfoy turns to Vince and Greg. “You two can walk her back.” 

They exchange a look. Finally Greg says, “No,” and Vince adds, “We go where you go.”   
  
Malfoy knows a losing fight when he sees one and just nods. “Fine.” 

“I actually don’t think-” she starts to say, only to stop herself when she realizes there’s no way to subtly say _I don’t think anyone with Death Eaters in the family should go with us._

Malfoy takes her meaning anyway. “Save it, Granger. We’re all going. Safety in numbers, isn’t it?” He darts a glance at Pansy and mutters, “Though I wouldn’t argue if you wanted to stay with Daphne and Blaise.”   
  
Pansy glares at him fiercely enough that he actually takes a step back, trodding on Neville’s foot when he does so. “Fuck off, Draco. I can cast a stunner and you can’t. If you’re going, I’m going.” 

It’s a point Hermione can’t argue with, nor is she inclined to. If she’s going to do something earth-shatteringly stupid and dangerous, she’d feel better having someone as vicious as Pansy covering her back. 

Speaking of doing stupid and dangerous things, “We need to send someone for a teacher. I know McGonagall dismissed you once, but she won’t if she knows there’s students going after the stone. I’d rather go for Snape, but-”

“No.” Potter cuts her off. “It can’t be Snape and Dumbledore isn’t here, so if someone needs to go for a teacher, it has to be McGonagall.” 

Malfoy twitches and Hermione thinks he might be one wrong move away from frothing at the mouth. “Weren’t you just complaining about wasting time? Fine, Tracey and Millicent, go find Professor McGonagall and get her to listen to you. Stop at the dorms first and get Theo, just in case.” He raises his eyebrows. “Good enough for you, Potter? I don’t see your resident mudbloods here helping out.” 

“Watch your mouth, Malfoy.” Hermione doesn’t realize the words have left her mouth until she’s staring at five dropped jaws and Pansy’s poor attempt at hiding a slightly hysterical giggle. She ignores them and catches Tracey’s wrist as she goes to follow Malfoy’s instruction. “If you can’t find McGonagall or she won’t listen, go to Flitwick. At least he’s a trained duellist.”   
  
Tracey nods and she and Millicent head back toward the dungeons, presumably to pick up Theo. Hermione turns back to the group. “Okay? Let’s go.” 

They make their way down the dark corridor, keeping an eye out for Filch or his cat. Finally, they reach a relatively normal looking door and the Gryffindors come to an abrupt halt, but don’t move to open it. Potter seems to be searching for something in his pockets and coming up empty. 

Malfoy makes a sound like a cat coughing up a hairball and starts to push past them, but Pansy grabs the back of his robes. 

Potter ignores them both in favor of addressing his housemates. “I don’t have the flute.”  
  
Weasley swears a blue streak and Pansy’s grip on Draco’s robes tightens. “Why do you need a flute?”   
  
Potter’s jaw tightens. “Because there’s a three headed dog on the other side of that door and if we want to get past it, we need music to put it to sleep.”   
  
Now it’s Pansy’s turn to swear and Hermione kind of wishes she could join in. Instead she wracks her brain for any spell that would conjure music. Next to her, Malfoy has gone still and he looks to be following the same train of thought. 

Their solution comes from the unexpected avenue of Vincent. Brow furrowed, he asks, “Can anyone sing?” 

Potter and Weasley’s lightning fast glances at Neville don’t go unnoticed. He flushes a deep crimson when they all turn to him, but her heart swells with pride when he squares his shoulders and says, “Okay. I can do this.” 

Potter looks like he wants to argue, but they don’t have any other options. He hesitates for only a second before saying, “Stay outside the door. Just get close enough that the dog will be able to hear you. Once we’re past it, lock the door and run. Try to find the McGonagall and the Slytherins or just head back to the tower.” Neville nods and Potter turns to Pansy. “Parkinson, it might not be a bad idea to have a stunner on deck just in case.” 

She smirks, brandishing her wand. “Way ahead of you, Potter.” 

Hermione is elected to cast _alohomora_ to unlock the door. Once they hear the bolt slide back, Neville takes a deep breath and launches into a folk song about a father watching his son go away to war. He has a surprisingly lovely voice and a small corner of Hermione’s heart is disappointed that she’s never heard him sing before. They ease the door open and the rest of her heart is immediately frozen in abject terror at the sheer mass of the animal that’s behind it. It’s snoring though, and Neville’s voice holds steady as they make their way into the room, leaving the door cracked so it can continue to filter through. 

Weasley gestures to the trapdoor and Hermione desperately wishes she had the power to cast wordless spells. They’re in the sixth year curriculum, but she resolves to start practicing them right away if they make it out of this. The hinges on the trapdoor squeak when Weasley lifts it and they cringe as a unit, but Neville hits a high note and the dog doesn’t stir. 

They disappear down the shaft under the trapdoor with the sound of Neville’s trembling countertenor floating behind them.   
  
Things move rather quickly after they land and before she has time to catch her breath, she’s standing on a chessboard. The hem of her robes is slightly singed from fighting the Devil’s Snare and Greg has a small cut above his eye from not dodging a flying key quickly enough, but they seem to be winning the chess game. 

At least, she thinks so, until there’s a long moment of silence and stillness and she realises it’s their turn to make a move and neither Malfoy nor Weasley have spoken. Up to this point, they’ve been trading off calling moves, occasionally consulting each other in a kind of strange détente. 

She looks at the others, but no one else seems to know what’s going on. Potter’s face is red and he’s growing progressively more agitated, but neither his best friend nor sworn enemy notice. Malfoy's eyes are locked on Weasley's. Their faces are grim. It takes Hermione a moment to realize what they've both figured out, but then, she didn't grow up playing wizard chess. She didn’t grow up playing chess at all.  
  
Weasley’s voice is low, but in the space it carries. “Malfoy, it’s the only way.”

Malfoy is shaking his head. “No, I won’t. We’ll figure out another way.” Weasley starts to protest and Malfoy snaps, “I won’t do that to him!”  
  
Weasley cocks his head, something defiant and angry in his eyes. “Don’t you think that should be his decision?”

Malfoy and Weasley both look over at Vince, who has his forehead creased in concentration. She sees the exact moment he realizes what Malfoy is about to tell him. “Knight moves in an L shape. So if you move like that, then the rook can hit me, but after it does, Weasley will be able to take the king.” He gives a sharp nod, ignoring Greg’s stricken face and Pansy’s furious protests. “Let’s do it.” 

Hermione feels tears prick her eyes. How can he be this stoic? How can _this_ be what they have to do in order to protect the Philosopher’s Stone? But of course, they’re children. They aren’t supposed to be doing this at all. Her voice breaks a little as she says, “We can find another way. You don’t have to do this.” 

He shakes his head. “You guys gotta go fast. Like you said, Quirrell could already be there. Or I guess maybe Snape.” He smiles. “It’s okay. I can take a hit.” 

Greg glowers, but doesn’t protest as Malfoy executes the move. With the path cleared, the rook slams into Vince with terrifying force and he crumples to the ground. Ron wastes no time in taking checkmate and then the six of them rush to Vince’s side. Hermione checks for a pulse. “He’s alive, but he’s out cold and his head is bleeding. We can’t leave him.” 

Malfoy nods, eyes clear. “If you cast a featherlight charm on him, Pansy should be able to maintain it and she and Greg can take that broom and get him out of here.” Hermione nods and begins casting a blood clotting charm on his head wound before moving on to the featherlight charm.

Pansy hands are trembling as she snaps, “I’m not leaving you!” but Malfoy shakes his head and puts one hand over hers. 

“Get Vince out of here and go get a teacher. Millie and Tracey should have found Professor McGonagall by now.”   
  
Sniffling, she nods, and helps Greg hoist the now near-weightless Vince into his arms. Malfoy turns back to Potter and Weasley, who have been watching with something like incredulity. “What are you staring at? Let’s go.”   
  
Down three members (four counting Neville), their little militia is starting to feel quite thin and Hermione begins to have doubts about their ability to take on a fully trained wizard that specializes in defensive magic, even if he is a colossal disappointment like Quirrell. The next chamber they enter offers an unconscious mountain troll, which the four of them skirt around with little issue.   
  
The walls of flame and bottles of poison pose a much realer problem.  
  
-

Draco’s head is pounding. His mind is still with Vince, cradled in Greg’s arms with Pansy stabilizing him. Next to him, Granger is pouring over the riddle and he knows he should be helping but no one else is helping either and she figures it out on her own handily. 

He doesn’t snap back to himself until Harry Potter reaches for the potion vial that she’s identified as the one that will let him move forward. There’s only enough for one person in there and at no point did anyone say that one person has to be Potter. He’ll be damned if he’s going to come all this way, let one of his oldest friends get hurt right in front of him, probably lose one million house points, all for Potter to swipe the glory out from under him as easily as he swipes the Snitch from the air.   
  
Fortunately, Granger has the same thought, though her reasoning is more humanitarian. She knocks Potter’s hand aside and says, “Are you mad? If Quirrell is a Death Eater, then it’s you he’s after. He already tried to kill you at least once.”   
  
Draco seizes on the opportunity to reach for the vial himself, saying, “If he’s a Death Eater, it should be me that goes. He won’t lay hands on a Malfoy,” which is sort of a dice roll and really they aren’t even sure Quirrell _is_ a Death Eater. It doesn’t matter though because Potter shoves him away from the vial, so he shoves Potter back and a voice in the back of his mind that sounds alarmingly like Pansy asks if they’re really going to die down here because he couldn’t hold it together long enough not to get into a shoving match with Potter in some kind of death chamber.   
  
Then there’s a whoosh from behind them and they turn just fast enough to see Ron Weasley disappear through the flames. He calls over his shoulder, “Sorry, mate! They’re right. It can’t be you.” 

What follows is a lot of screaming, mostly on the part of Potter, while Hermione and Draco argue about the best way to get them through the flames. It's only when Hermione shouts at him that if he distracts them, they're going to blow up the whole chamber that Potter finally shuts up, through he's shaking with rage and his knuckles are white gripping his wand. They land on a modified freezing charm, essentially the inverse of the spell Hermione used to conjure her jar of fire. 

It takes them four tries to get the spell right and after each failed attempt, Potter grows increasingly more agitated. He looks like he’s about to break and start shouting when the charm finally holds and they scramble through after Weasley.   
  
He’s standing face to face with a monster that’s growing out of the back of Quirrell’s head. 

It’s hissing something about blood traitors, but jerks to face them when they make it into the room. “Harry Potter.” With its eyes locked on Potter, Draco has the chance to get a good look- slitted nose, red eyes, mouth like a slash across the face. He’s looking at The Dark Lord.  
  
Three things happen at once: Granger grabs his hand; the (monster) Dark Lord leans Quirrell’s body toward Potter, starting to extend an arm that’s bending the wrong way; and Weasley lunges past him at Granger and shoves something into her hands. “Run! Fucking run!” Then he flings himself at Quirrell, knocking him off balance.   
  
Granger shoves the thing Weasley had given her into his hands and says, “I have to help them. Run. Get this out of here. Get it to Dumbledore.” He looks down and realizes he’s holding a small, but dense, blood-red crystal. He’s holding the Philosopher’s Stone. 

Granger screams the incantation for the freezing spell they’d cast earlier and against all odds, the flames obey her. “Go!”

When Draco looks back on this moment later, he will analyze it from every angle. He will concoct dozens of scenarios and act them out in his head. Some of them will be vivid enough that they show up in his dreams. He will never, ever know which one is right.   
  
He tightens his fist around the stone and loops his other arm around Granger’s waist, half pulling, half carrying her through the flames with him, ignoring her shouted protests and the weak beat of her fists against his shoulder. They skid to a stop on the other side of the fire, but he keeps hold of her until the freeze wears off and he can let her go and start looking for the bottle that will get them back the way they came.   
  
As soon as she’s free, Granger hits his arm again, open-handed this time so it stings, and Draco reflects that she’s maybe been spending too much time with Pansy. “Granger! Knock it off.”   
  
“What were you thinking? They could die!” Her face is flushed and he can see that her eyes are filled to the brim with tears that are threatening to overflow. He takes a deep breath and turns back to the table with the bottles.   
  
“I was thinking, Granger, that you will have exhausted almost all of your magic casting that spell alone and you’re in no shape to fight a bunny rabbit, much less a madman who has the bloody Dark Lord sticking out of the back of his head!” He finds the bottle he’s looking for and holds it up. “This should get us back through the way we came and we can get help.”   
  
She doesn’t answer him and when he turns, he sees that she’s leaning up against the wall, still flushed with a sheen of sweat covering her face. Her eyes are closed and she’s shaking. “Granger.”  
  
She shakes her head and sinks to the floor. “You were right. Gloat later. Run now.” She cracks her eyes open a sliver. “I’m as safe here as I’m going to be. Get the stone somewhere safe and bring back help.” Her eyes drift shut again.   
  
Draco swallows the potion and runs. 


End file.
